I could rate this album instantly, without even listening to it again, as I know it really well... as lots of people from my generation I guess. I remember when I was a teenager and 2 friends came back with this (probably found in their older sister stuff) and it was the cool thing to listen to. And I was reluctant to love Buckley at that time, because I was suspicious of anything that was too "cool". And I was a prick, looking for speed and violence (in my music), so Hallelujah was not an instant hit for me. Fast forward, years later I (re)discover Hallelujah on the soundtrack of Lord of War, and I don't need much more to finally listen to this album and discover it for real, learning to love its brilliance and its (few) downs, the thin equilibrium between quietness and rage that drive this record.
There is something inherently tragic about listening to an album from a rock star who died young. Looking at their picture on the album cover, forever frozen in time, with just their songs left to talk to us now.
In Buckley’s case, he released just this one album then died, apparently after a swimming accident, at the age of 30. There’s an additional level of poignancy here, because his father Tim (who had abandoned him as a baby) also died young, in his case from a drugs overdose at 28. Both father and son were not really appreciated when they were alive, but now have posthumous reputations that have grown as time has passed.
Tim Buckley’s ghost haunts this record - it was released in 1994, but it harks back to the folk rock sounds of the 60s and 70s, particularly in the cover versions of the songs Lilac Wine and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. It’s difficult to know what directions Jeff may have gone in after this, and we’ll never find out.