Amazon.com: Resembling at times a soft-sung Robert Plant, Buckley was an intuitive vocalist capable of dizzying arabesques and choir-boy sweetness. He is joined here by a tight band for 10 tracks highlighting his stylistic range--Pearl Jam bluesy on "Eternal Life," impossibly serene on Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," art-school noisy on "So Real," Led Zep daring on "Mojo Pin." Unorthodox, this was the debut of '94. --Jeff Bateman
No Saving Grace All I've heard for almost 15 years now is 'Like, oh my God, Jeff Buckley's music is so, like, beautiful...' Well I decided to drink the Kool-aid and buy the CD- I figured, 'Hey, I like tragic rock stars, I like beautiful music when it's done right. I'll give it a shot.' I'm sorry I can't give a review to all the songs because I was always either asleep or had left the room by song six. He's the classic singer without a song- his lyrics are full of the type of mawkish, frat-boy pathos that sorority girls swoon over and anyone with a brain rolls their eyes or cringes at. He's nothing compared to the Cowboy Junkies or Nick Drake or Elliot Smith or Simon or Garfunkel. I only gave it two stars because it is indeed a good cd if you can't fall asleep. Another case of early death making someone into an undeserved legend. Maybe he might have matured into the genuine article but I guess we'll never know.
Sings With Heart & Soul I am a big fan of jeff Buckley. His heartfelt delivery of songs is only matched by his insightful and thoughful lyrics. His style at times especially on this album comes close to a wonderful new singer-songwriter Arrica Rosein her new album La La Lost.
So Real If you've got a thing for music then you should enjoy this. You can feel Buckley's emotion and soul come through in the recording. You can hear the imperfections and feel how real it is. Beautiful lyrics along with his voice take you away. If you listen to music and truly enjoy doing so, then you will not be disappointed.
Most people will probably buy this album for Jeff Buckley's cover of Hallelujah. That's a perfectly legitimate reason as he definitely recorded the definitive version. However once you start listening to the other tracks, you realize you just hit the jackpot. "Lilac Wine," "Lover, You Should've Come Over," and "So Real" are great ones to start off with. His death was tragic, but his legend will live on with his music.
Not graceful enough 3 1/2
It is an amazing debut, and of course a bittersweet release, but I can't ever shake the feeling of overachieving all over this thing. The diverse ten song set showcases Buckley's premier falsetto and many of it's incarnations with some haunting rock variety, but for every grace that occurs, it sounds like as many or more steps are taken towards overkill, musically and vocally piling on top of things only to muddle their significance. In effect the most memorable songs occur when a less ambitious, more minimalist agenda is at stake (hence the ill-represented success of Hallelujah) but throughout many overreaching compositions Buckley hits many-a-stride in between.
"It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah..." A legendary album and justly so. Every song is a masterpiece in its own right: the title track, which gave Radiohead the basis for their Bends-era sound; "Mojo Pin," at once gorgeous and disturbing, "Heroin" for the '90s, the beautiful "Last Goodbye," with strings, a lovely falsetto, and a weirdly unresolved chord progression, the cabaret-esque "So Real," with a very heavy, very strange guitar solo and gasping vocals, the brokenhearted "Lover, You Should've Come Over," with Buckley overdubbing himself to create a gospel choir effect, the Zeppelin-esque heavy rocker "Eternal Life," the creepy, bongo-driven closer "Dream Brother." And the covers are just as good as the originals: "Lilac Wine" is jazz filtered through Pink Floyd, and his famous version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" is a heartbreaking, beautiful, sensual reading. It's nothing more than a gentle electric guitar and Buckley's vocals, and those vocals are some of the best I've heard by anyone, ever. It gives me the chills, and out of the many versions of the song I've heard, I think it's the best. Of course, it was my introduction to Jeff Buckley's work - I'm in a band that plans to cover "Hallelujah," and I was searching the web for versions of the song a couple days ago. This one really jumped out at me. Still, I think it's unfair that it completely overshadows the other songs on this album. And "Corpus Christi Carol" is a stark, effective cover of an old hymn. The production is normally stripped-down, putting the emphasis where it belongs: on Jeff's voice, one of the best ever. This album is an excellent of jazz, rock, folk, blues, gospel, world music, and soul, and it works spectacularly well. It's a shame Buckley had to die so young. He was an amazing talent.
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