SKETCHES (FOR MY SWEETHEART THE DRUNK)
Jeff Buckley
COLUMBIA
SKETCHES (FOR MY SWEETHEART THE DRUNK)
Jeff Buckley
COLUMBIA
They run through this collection like a string of loosely buried land mines, images and aphorisms with the prescient sting of epitaph: "This way of life is so devised/To snuff out the mind that moves" ("The Sky Is A Landfill"); "I'm not with you/Not of you" ("I Know We Could Be So Happy Baby [If We Wanted To Be]"). But Jaff Buckley's death by drowning, a year ago this month in Memphis, was a tragic accident, and the few finished records that he left behind - the 1993 Live at Sin-é EP, the 1994 album Grace - were about finding a passage through darkness, into light. ... - DAVID FRICKE
There is a smog-covered wasteland of tract houses and strip malls in the
Southern California desert known as the Inland Empire. It's an
undistinguished, oppressive stretch of land that is anything but conductive
to self-expression. Its habitants either fall into anonymous office jobs and
spend the rest of their lives commuting back and forth to Los Angeles on
congested freeways, or they wind up strung-out on speed and crack, bussing
tables at the local Sizzler and living in a nearby trailer park.
This is where Jeff Buckley and I spent, and somehow survived, our formative
years. During one of our conversations after the release of his debut album,
Grace, we sat around and contemplated the incredible odds we had beat
to break out of the cycle. In both cases music was our savior. It allowed us
to rise above the morass of indifference and see a better way.
``From womb to tomb, it's thug country,'' Buckley lamented about those early
environs. ``People grow up repressed from the spirit, day by day. It's
misogyny, it's birth, death, work. It's misery.''
Then he confided, ``Music is the only thing I got. It's the only thing that's
been really great to me all the time.''
In life and in his music, Buckley made it a habit to rail against the system.
Rather than submitting to the drab orthodoxy of contemporary rock, he
aspired to capture glittery dreams and black magic in his songs. His voice
swooned and soared, his guitars vibrated delicately and rushed with rage. His
music was truly like no other.
It's difficult to express the heartbreak I felt when Buckley drowned in the
Mississippi River during a moonlight swim last May. Not only was he an
extraordinary person, but I believe him to be one of the few genuine musical
talents of my generation.
This sentiment is compounded by listening to his recorded remainders on the
two-disc Sketches (For My Sweetheart, The Drunk). Buckley's songs -
dark, brooding, full of bared emotion - have a power all their own. They
creep into your life and are impossible to shake, for each one holds so much
relevance and resonates so much truth.
Buckley was unrelenting in his pursuit to divulge the secrets of the heart.
His songs are sprinkled with vibrant images of love, lust and, most
hauntingly, death. Musically, he coalesced his fondness of soul, jazz and
classic rock into a trembling, poetic noise. It's hard to dismiss the
intensity of the gospel-tinged ``Everybody Here Wants You,'' the poignant
``Opened Once'' or the anxious ``Witches' Rave,'' on which he hopelessly
sings, ``Am I blessed or am I cursed, I can't tell.''
Despite early claims to the contrary, these are fully-formed, living and
breathing songs. On the four-track recordings that make up the second half of
this collection, Buckley further reveals his ability to make music that is
wholly engaging, even in a less-formed state.
``Haven't You Heard'' pairs furious electric guitars with a soaring verse.
The desperate, frustrated ``Your Flesh Is So Nice'' reveals a punk streak.
And the hushed blues-tinged lullaby that is ``Satisfied Mind'' closes the set
with ghostly serenity, as Buckley sings, ``My life is over and my time has
run out.''
It's impossible to not feel a choking swell of sadness while listening to
these recordings. But the one thing Buckley learned during those years stuck
in the middle of nowhere was that good music like this can make your problems
disappear. - Aidin Vaziri
| Standout Tracks |
| Everybody Here Wants You Morning Theft You & I |
| Fact File |
| Recorded: Summer 1996-early winter '97, New York and winter-spring, 1997, Memphis |
| Producers: Tom Verlaine, Andy Wallace, Jeff Buckley |
Even in normal circumstances, Jeff Buckley's second album would be an event,
given the impact of his 1994 debut Grace - an album fans were always apt to
talk about in terms of love as much as admiration. Normal circumstances don't
apply here, though, and when Buckley drowned in the Mississippi River last
May, he was working towards an album he planned to call My Sweetheart, The
Drunk. Hence, the addition of ''Sketches'' to the title: for what we're left
with is a double-CD work-in-progress, or several sets of work-in-progress.
The first CD comprises 10 songs recorded between the summer of 1996 and early
'97, with ex-Television guitarist Tom Verlaine producing. These songs might
have made up, more or less, the second album. Might have, that is, if Buckley
had been happy with the sessions. He wasn't, and Grace was proving a tricky
act to follow: ''I'm in the middle of some wild shit now, please be patient,''
he posted on his Web site in December 1996. And although he remained friendly
with Verlaine, he wanted to try something new, and promptly left New York for
Memphis.
Buckley had planned to join Andy Wallace, producer and engineer on Grace, in
the studio, where perhaps they would have taken their cue from Buckley's
four-track recordings included on the second disc. We'll never know, as he
died before band sessions began, so it's a guessing game, but Mary Guibert,
Buckley's mother, under whose guidance the record was made, has done her best
to make the guesses educated ones. She enlisted the help of Wallace, Buckley's
band members, and his friends, Michael Clouse and Soundgarden's Chris Cornell,
a bunch of people as qualified as any to reflect her son's tastes.
AS THE OPENING track, The Sky Is A Landfill, begins to tick off familiar
Buckley tricks, the style is immediately recognisable - the vocals shift from
near-conversation to scream, say, or the swift change in mood as gentle
accompaniment develops into rock-out. Buckley had managed to fashion his own
signature out of quite conventional sources. The easy comparison with Van
Morrison, one suggested by Buckley himself on his first release - 1993's Live
At Sin-e EP, on which he covered Morrison's The Way Young Lovers Do. Rock,
folk and jazz seemed near-equal touchstones, while Grace's raw version of
Benjamin Britten's Corpus Christi Carol offered further evidence of his
voice's versatility.
Understatement was seldom a problem. Buckley never played cool, which partly
explains his impact - his disarming candour a novelty on media channels
saturated with irony. It was as if the intensity of his performance, live and
on record inspired the same in fans.
This commitment comes with a downside - a tendency to bombast and a weekness
for sophomore poetry which never reveals exactly why the sky may be a
landfill. Other lyrics speak of ''the moon'' and ''meteors'' and ''witches'',
underlining how a Buckley song often likes to paint events on a large scale,
calling on the elements and the supernatural, no less. It's often a question
of taking the good with the bad: Buckley's virtues brushing against his vices,
so that his invigorating lack of restraint can also become cloying or mawkish.
Then there are gorgeous moments of clarity. On the second track, Everybody
Here Wants You, the music quietens and Buckley, wistful, sings, ''we all look
good from a distance''. The song is a tender soul ballad, something Al Green
might sing: part prayer, part love letter. Everybody Here Wants You and the
later track, Morning Theft, are as moving as anything on Grace. The latter
also suggests that sketches might not be too bad a way to appreciate Buckley.
Think of Grace, and often it is a part of a song, not the whole thing, which
comes to mind - a Buckley vocal swoop, perhaps or the first hummed notes of
Mojo Pin. So it is with Morning Theft, which sets off as by-numbers Buckley -
the strumming guitar, hint of longing in the lyrics - until it hits one of
those moments when everything stops, and Buckley sings, ''there's no relief in
this''. The relief that follows, via the track New Year's Prayer, seems to
echo - and here's an unanticipated influence - Donna Summer. It could be I
Need Love with an added eastern twist and a mantra: ''feel no shame for what
you are''.
The temptation, of course, is to scour the lyrics for clues to Buckley's state
of mind, or to find a retrospective poignancy, most marked on Vancouver, where
he sings ''stay with me under these waves tonight''. As on Grace, yearning and
regret serve as a thread, coating the songs with wishful thinking, missed
opportunities, and if onlys. At its best, Buckley's music is a perfect fit for
these themes, inflected by unease and dissatisfaction. When this tension is
missing, he can sound dissapointingly workaday: Witches Rave and Yard Of
Blonde Girls could be the sound of any bunch of competent rockers at work,
although admittedly a bunch boasting a highly gifted vocalist.
The voice is the thing on You & I, which closes the first disc. What sounds
like a swirling wind provides the accopaniment, as Buckley re-affirms that few
pop instruments are expressive as his voice. It closes an impressive
collection. A generous reckoning might conclude that Buckley would have edited
out its lesser moments.
The second CD continues with later versions of Nightmares By The Sea and New
Year's Prayer from the Verlaine sessions. Musicologists might find the
amendment interesting, evidence to help piece together Buckley's changing
musical direction. But the former is not among the stronger New York songs,
and the latter hardly benefits from the reprise. Haven't You Heard follows -
Buckley on paranoia, with wilfully discordant results, which at least suit the
theme - before Buckley's final compositions, the four-track, kick in.
I Know We Could Be So Happy, Baby (If We Wanted To Be) is model Buckley, with
longing shot through both sound and lyric. If another musician wanted to pay
tribute with pastiche, this might have been the result, and fine enough is it
too. Murder Suicide Meteor Slave and Demon John, however, are spooky affairs.
Buckley's mother has said her son was impressed with the sound Sonic Youth
drew from Easley, the Memphis studio, and these two songs are awash with a
Sonic Youthy mix of the noisy, the melodic and the odd.
SEPARATING THESE tracks is Back In New York City, a cover of Gabriel-period
Genesis's Back In N.Y.C., and while it's a pleasure to hear the overblown The
Lamb Lies Down On Broadway tune reduced to a four-track, little is gained from
the excercise. Your Flesh Is So Nice follows, and while most things recorded
in such modest circumstances risk sounding like 1977, even on 24-track this
might have turned out new wave. Jewel Box, with its seductive melody, works in
contrast, as if Buckley, in his last work, was torn between the rough and the
smooth. Perhaps he felt imprisoned by Grace, found its lyrical ease all too
simple, and fancied messing his sound up a bit.
That he was restless seems beyond dispute, and helps make sense of the final
track. Selecting a radio recording from 1992 might appear perverse, but
Satisfied Mind, a C&W number, is apt. A satisfied mind, runs the song's moral,
is the hardest thing to find. Buckley's mother obviously thought it a fitting
finale.
Robert Yates
Death for a pop star is never the end - it just marks the creation of a new
set of myths. After Jeff Buckley's tragic drowning, it was easy to see him as
the archetypal doomed artist who, like Nick Drake, was almost too good for
this world. It helped that you could also fit his father, Tim Buckley, and
death from an overdose into this category.
Buckley Jr may well be drifting toward sainthood, but this collection is
going to make it difficult for even his most romantically inclined acolytes
to sustain his image. What's apparent behind even the most bizarre moments
here is a sense of carnality that was hidden on the carefully textured
spirituality of his sole full album, 'Grace'. Prince is the closest
comparison, and not just in terms of musical eclecticism - Buckley seems to
share the horny one's belief that sex is the only real subject.
The studio material is the more listenable by far, even though it's also the
most contentious. His family claim that Buckley was pleased with the sessions.
Some of his friends say he was planning to hold a ''burning party'' rather
than release them.
It's hard to believe these songs were headed for the flames, however. 'The Sky
Is A Landfill' shows Bucley outhollering Black Francis, while 'Everybody Here
Wants You' is a delightful take on '60s Motown. The twisting musical journey
continues with 'Witches' Rave', an unashamedly exuberant glam-stomper.
The album clearly has its moments of glory, yet too often it leaves you
wondering what might have been. 'Vancouver' nods towards such well-loved
show-stoppers as 'Last Goodbye', but it fizzles out before really taking
flight. You can even sense Buckley over-stretching himself on 'Nightmares By
The Sea', a song that sounds improbably like the goth pop of The Cure.
Buckley's four-track efforts turn up even bigger surprises. As well as
displaying an unsuspected love of prog-rock with a cover of early Genesis
('Back In New York City'), he also treats us to single entendres like ''I know
you're a woman by the way you burp below.'' But among the doodles you can
still hear embryonic gems: 'I Know We Could Be So Happy Baby (If We Wanted To
Be)' is an eerily beautiful ballad with a poignant resonance: ''I'm the ghost
who comes and goes.''
The main argument against this record has to be that Buckley would never have
sanctioned the release of much of this stuff - only someone who'd seriously
lost the plot would've put out the Devo-esque horror of 'Murder Suicide Meteor
Slave'. But this frustrating inconsistensy was presumably the point his mum
was making with the title. We've only been left with the sketches. The
masterpiece has been lost forever.
JOHN MULLEN
Posthumous double-LP of demos, plus live and studio recordings
THIS is not the follow-up that Jeff Buckley had intended to Grace, the
astonishing 1994 album which was the first introduction most of us had to his
yearning, soaring, fragile genius. Although he made several false starts,
sadly the album Buckley planned was never completed. He was on his way to a
rehearsal studio in Memphis to meet his band and commence work on a brand new
set of recordings when he stopped by the river bank at the Mud Island marina
and went for that fateful swim.
Buckley's record company had started pressuring him for a new album in 1995,
but the singer was in no rush. In October, 1996, he told fans via his
web-site that a new album called My Sweetheart The Drunk would be
released in spring, 1997. He looked set to meet the deadline, recording in
New York with Tom Verlaine as co-producer and trying out the new material
with his band at a number of live shows under a series of improbable
pseudonyms.
At the suggestion of his friends in The Grifters, Buckley transferred to
Memphis early in 1997, and cut some more tracks with Verlaine. But he was
dissatisfied with the results and, according to some sources, even talked of
burning the tapes. He decided to start again, this time using Andy Wallace,
who had produced, engineered and mixed the first album.
The band was dispatched back to New York while Buckley set about making
four-track home recordings of new songs and reworking several others from the
abandoned project with Verlaine. He also gave the new songs a run-out playing
solo on Monday nights at a Memphis club called Barristers. Finally he felt
ready, studio time was booked to begin recording on June 30, and Buckley
recalled the band to commence rehearsals. Ha was to die before they ever
began.
No one knows what Buckley would have finally emerged with. What we have here
across two CDs is as authentic a representation of his remarkable musical
vision as is available, compiled by his mother, Mary Guibert, and Chris
Cornell, a close friend of Buckley's, and engineered, as he intended, by
Wallace.
The 10 songs on the first disc in effect constitute the scrapped
Verlaine-produced, proving to be a staggering piece of work which builds and
expands upon the territory mapped out by Grace. If Verlaine knows why
Buckley didn't want these songs released, he isn't saying.
Perhaps he is just as perplexed as the rest of us, for it is no exaggeration
to say that several of these recordings are touched with genius. ''Opened
Once'' is one of those almost unbearably tender falsetto numbers, a thing of
rare, fragile beauty with a heavenly melody that slips out of reach every
time you try to grasp it. ''Morning Theft'' has a similarly dreamy quality,
while ''Vancouver'' is edgy and razor sharp. ''New Year's Prayer'' is an
epic, with an Arabic feel reminiscent of Zeppelin's ''Kashmir'', but ''You
And I'' is the tour de force, mysterious and ethereal, featuring just
Buckley's voice and an eerie, droning echo in the background, reminiscent of
some of his father's wilder experiments on Starsailor. It may just be
the best vocal performance he ever recorded.
Elsewhere, he explores a much fuller band sound with a tough brittle edge.
''The Sky Is A Landfill'' has a touch of Robert Plant about the vocals, while
''Yard Of Blonde Girls'' is a slow, guitar-laden,grunge-textured number.
''Nightmares By The Sea'' has a magnificently insistent driving riff and a
pop chorus that could have been written by Marc Bolan. The gorgeous
''Everybody Here Wants You'' is the sort of white soul performance Mick
Hucknall must dream about, and ''Witches' Rave'' is almost Beatlesque with
Buckley asking, ''Am I cursed or I am blessed?''
Had he lived to burn these tapes this would have ranked as one of the great
lost albums of all time, however good its eventual replacement.
The second disc consists of work in progress at the time of his death - six
new songs recorded at home on a four-track, two reworkings of tracks from the
Verlaine sessions, a version of Peter Gabriel's ''Back In New York City''
from The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, and a wondrous 1992 live
recording of ''Satisfied Mind'', the country standard once recorded by The
Byrds. It's a fascinating series of glimpses into the mind of a restlessly
creative spirit, constantly experimenting and pushing at the boundaries.
Listening to the melodic inventiveness of demos such as ''I Know We Could Be
So Happy, Baby'' and the experimental weirdness of ''Demon John'', you can
only wonder what he would have achieved, and to what further shores he might
have taken that extraordinary voice.
Nigel Williamson
JEFF BUCKLEY was, perhaps, not best suited to life as a musician. Not for
lack of ability or talent - anything but - but because everything about his
finest music was at odds with the demands of the music industry. It was
wilful, spontaneous, awkward, impossible to package or label. And it was
easily damaged.
'Grace', one of the finest debuts ever, emerged in September 1994 to
(muted) fanfares. Warm, complex and human, it lacked only a little grit and
sweat, some rough surfaces to highlight the sheer beauty surrounding them.
Immediately he began an unbroken year touring clubs and theatres in every
town that would have him throughout the developed world - providing him with
an awestruck and loving fanbase, and leaving us, in August 1995, with a
somewhat broken Jeff. He would never tour again or finish another record.
Before the year's end, rumours were already circulating that Jeff, exhausted
from touring and disillusioned by the machinations of the music industry,
would not release a second LP. By mid-1996, however, he felt he had
sufficient raw material to give it a bash, and began work with 'like-minded'
producer Tom Verlaine. Sporadic recordings continued throughout the year, but
Jeff was losing heart. Something - he didn't know quite what - wasn't right.
The music was too clean and clear, the songs too simple. Where 'Grace' had
developed over time, and in front of audiences, these songs weren't
progressing from their original four-tracks.
He put the recordings on hold in December - he was to abandon them altogether
in February - rented a car and played a series of solo club dates in America
under an assumed name. He wanted, as he described it, ''that precious and
irreplaceable luxury of failure'', but he was also looking to combat
self-doubt. He could no longer remember quite how he'd come to write and
record an album such as 'Grace'. His verse-chorus-verse pop-rock with
Verlaine, though powerful stuff, was the model of restraint by comparison.
The tour confirmed his darkest suspicions - the year had been wasted. He
needed to explore the few new songs he still liked, to improvise others into
being, to work away from marketing schedules and profit projections; above
all, to work hard. Having decamped from the busy studios of New York
to relaxed atmospheric Memphis, he sent the band home, and began recording
new demos alone.
Barely three months later, while swimming in the Mississipppi, he was caught
by the undertow and drowned.
'Sketches' splits his last year's material in two - 13 of the bare-boned
Verlaine tracks followed by six of the demos. The studio material, for all
his misgivings, is astonishing - powerful and intense with barely a wasted
note. The four-tracks veer between fully realised new songs - at least equal
to the studio work - and scrappy, noisy, messy jams and indulgences. And at
just 90 minutes in total, perhaps rumours of 'a wealth of unfinished
material' were somewhat exaggerated.
Though much of 'Sketches' is extraordinary, it is emphatically not the album
Jeff would have wished to see released. But it's pointless to bemoan the fact
that he did not finish this album. He should have had a lifetime.
David Kelly
Trouver n'est rien. Le difficile est de s'ajouter ce qu'on trouve.''
(Paul Valéry, Monsieur Teste). Il faudrait d'abord dire que, pour ceux
qui restent, la mort - brutale ou pas - chagrine, désarme, mais ne pousse pas
forcément à entrer en dévotion, à s'installer dans le fétichisme commémoratif.
On a toujours pensé que la compagnie des grands vivants était une expérience
plus gaiement perturbante que certains rassurants commerces avec les fantômes.
On savait donc que même paré d'un prévisible halo de légende, le Jeff Buckley
d'outre-tombe n'arriverait jamais à la cheville du Jeff Buckley vivant,
vibrant. Qu'à nos oreilles, ce dernier resterait d'une dérangeante liberté, ni
effacé ni mythifié, ni pâli ni maquillé par l'action mensongère du souvenir.
A peine figé, gravé sous les traits d'une jeunesse qui, de toute façon,
lui va bien, une jeunesse qui aura su repousser les spectres de l'habitude -
ce rhumatisme du coeur. Qu'on en tienne pour preuve les violentes beautés d'un
Grace toujours pas revenu de sa promenade sur les cimes - pierre
précieuse dont le temps ne saurait éroder les angles aigus, ternir les éclats
et les excès, domestiquer les reflets d'ombre et de lumière.
A vrai dire, on ne demandait donc rien de plus. Tout en sachant que cette
époque, avec ses récurrentes peurs de vide, de l'absence et du secret,
refuserait que les choses s'inachèvent ainsi: il nous serait donc forcément
proposé d'en voir un peu plus, d'en entendre davantage, de prolonger coûte que
coûte. C'est l'objet de ce double CD, composé de sessions et de demos
initialement destinées à un deuxième album tué dans l'oeuf. Passé les
inévitables questions sur la purété d'intension de l'entreprise, on peut
pourtant se réjouir. D'abord parce que l'on a échappé à la compil du souvenir,
au live à briquets ou à l'album-hommage avec aréopage de stars - horreurs qui
viendront bien en leur temps. Ensuite parce que Sketches (for my sweetheart
the drunk) est mieux qu'un disque de compensation à l'usage des
inconsolés, un des albums-mouchoirs dans lequel on vient éponger son coeur
mouillé et ses yeux rougis. Rêche, pas toujours commode ni séduisant, il
devrait même dérouter les admirateurs de Grace et froisser une légende
brodée sur les thèmes de perfection - voire de l'angélisme. Sketches
apporte en effet un riche contrepoint : soit la confrontation entre Jeff
Buckley et l'inaboutissement, entre un génie et ses brouillons, entre la belle
et le brut - voire l'abrupt. Ainsi cette musique connaissait les ingrats
vertiges de l'ébauche, du tâtonnement. Il aurait fallu être bien naïf ou bien
pieux pour en douter, mais on ignorait que la piste valût d'être creusée.
La première partie du disque, composée de sessions en groupe sous la houlette
de Tom Verlaine, ne convainc pourtant pas immédiatement. Si Grace
évoquait une trance sans nom, un voyage ivre au-delà des styles, ce recueil de
chansons - que Buckley aurait renié avant de s'envoler pour Memphis - semble
quant à lui beaucoup plus terrestre. Non pas que la musique renonce ici à
toute élévation. Simplement, dans une atmosphère plus conforme aux climats,
schémas et formats de l'écriture de rock, Buckley gagne le plus souvent les
hauteurs à la seule force de sa voix et des guitares, s'arrache à la pesanteur
soit par d'impressionnantes mises à feu - les dynamités The Sky Is A
Landfill et Nightmares By The Sea, la montée en sauvagerie de
Vancouver -, soit par de plus douces ascensions - la ballade Morning
Theft, la mélopée orientale de New Year's Prayer, la voix flottante
de You & I. Comme s'il voulait rompre avec ce rôle d'Icare que les
marchands de mythe s'apprêtaient déjà à lui faire jouer, Buckley prend pour
point de départ des territoires plus connus, plus fréquentés ; mais ses
chansons en dépassent suffisamment les bornes pour ne pas porter l'aveu d'un
renoncement. Une seule fois, on l'entendra rester sur le carreau - sur un
Yard of blonde girls qui, avec son surplus de graisse dans le moteur,
se condamne à voler en rase-mottes.
La deuxième partie de disque fréquente encore d'autres altitudes, en
particulier sur les dix derniers titres. Car là, pourtant loin de
l'incandescence de ses disques et de la folle intensités de ses concerts,
Buckley, seul avec son 4-pistes, campe au coeur même de sa musique, dégaine
des demos comme ce journal rêverait d'en recevoir ne serait-ce qu'un tour de
six mots : des document bruts, sales, mais bourrés d'énergie, de grâce et
d'audace, pas encore frottés à la difficile réalité du travail de groupe. Les
travaux d'un homme qui déclarait il y a quatre ans ''avoir toujours mis un
point d'honneur à résoudre toutes les énigmes du son'' et qui n'aura cessé
de poser de nouvelles équations. Ne pas s'attendre à des demos-papparazzi qui,
sous couvert de faire dans le documentaire, voudrait transmettre l'illusion de
l'intimité, de l'artiste saisi dans son émouvante nudité : qui rêve ici de
surprendre Buckley à poil dans sa cuisine devra passer son chemin. Car il y a
mieux à faire : par exemple affronter les étonnantes démences électriques de
Murder suicide meteor slave, Demon John, Your flesh is so
nice ou du Back in NYC de Genesis (!). Là, Buckley s'en donne à
coeur joie, affole sa propre boussole, rit de sa cruelle liberté. Ensuite,
Jewel Box et surtout la divine simplicité de Satisfied mind
appliquent sur nos tympans le plus réconfortant des baumes ; mais il est trop
tard, on a entendu l'impensable. Et c'est en égratignant ainsi l'icône, en
grattant sous l'or d'un musicien qui risque d'être trop vite statufié, que
Sketches gagne sa plus belle raison d'être. En retranscrivant ce que le
fou chantant Buckley était parvenu à rester, malgré son enrôlement plus ou
moins forcé dans les jeux du cirque rock : un voyageur sans regret, une sorte
de Hun unique, prêt à brûler les traces du passé, à consumer le présent et à
embraser le futur par le seul souffle de sa foulée. Un type qui, comme
monsieur Teste, aurait tout fait ''pour mûrir ses inventions et en faire
ses instincts''.
Sketches (for my sweetheart the drunk)
(Columbia/Sony).
MÅNS IVARSSON
Per Bjurman
(masterpiece)
Martin Jönsson
Den här plattan hade jag verkligen kunnat vara utan. Ja, missförstå mig rätt,
det är inte det att jag ogillar Jeff Buckley.
Men om inte artisten hade vadat ut i Mississippi en dag i början av förra
sommaren, samtidigt som en förbipasserande pråm skapade olycksaliga strömmar,
så hade han hunnit sammanställa sitt andra verk efter eget huvud. Och
sångaren med den gudabenådade, skira rösten drevs uppenbarligen av en
exceptionell artistisk vision.
Första delen av denna dubbel utgörs av de sessioner Jeff och hans band hade
med Television-gitarristen Tom Verlaine som producent. Buckley blev
inte nöjd. Verlaine lämnade studion med orden ``Du borde kanske fundera över
att ställa lite mindre hårda krav på dig själv''.
Han hade en poäng. Plattan har en enhetlig känsla över sig, sångerna är
diskret instrumenterade och Jeffs röst står ohotad i centrum. I spannet
mellan mjuka falsetter och nästan hysterisk, oförlöst längtan, minner
sångaren ömsom om en meditativ Robert Plant, ömsom som en
stjärnseglande Marc Bolan. Det är hart när omöjligt att vara likgiltig
inför den intensiva ``The Sky Is A Landfill'', Soundgarden-lika ``Yard Of
Blonde Girls'' och den episka ``New Year's Prayer''. Under det
besvärjelselika mantrat ``Feel no shame for what you are'' närmar sig Jeff
den annars oefterhärmlige Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
Avslutande ``You & I'' sjunger Jeff Buckley ensam, till ett dimhöjlt ekande,
och det låter som en trosbekännelse från en fallen ängel.
Del två utgörs främst av Buckleys ensamma demoinspelningar. Den som inte vill
stiga in i sångarens privata rum och lyssna till den bittra gråten från en
torterad poet eller den livsglada lekfullheten hos en förälskad yngling, gör
klokast i att stanna utanför. Det är ofta mörkt och introvert - och stundtals
bitande närgånget och starkt.
Jeff Buckley vadade ner i floden ung och vacker, fullt påklädd och sjungande
för full hals. På något sätt är det en rätt vacker bild.
Lars Thulin
Johan Lindqvist
Det känns givetvis lite hårt att döma en död man. När Jeff Buckley simmade ut i Mississippi-floden förra sommaren för att aldrig komma tillbaka lämnade han efter sig den påbörjade uppföljaren till 1994 års Grace. 90-talets mest talangfulle sångares kvarlåtenskap släpps nu som dubbelalbumet Sketches (For My Sweetheart, The Drunk) och man får hoppas att det är vad Jeff hade velat. Bland de arton låtarna finns mycket som nog skulle ha kommit att sållas bort i ett senare skede av inspelningarna, men som i det här sammanhanget har sin mening. En del inspelningar är gjorda av Tom Verlaine, en del är enkla portastudiodemos. Jeffs röst får nya inramningar i souliga Everybody Here Wants You, sparsmakat orientalisk-klingande New Year's Prayer, larmiga Your Flesh Is So Nice och i Genesis Back In New York City. Jeff Buckley behövde inte skjuta i sig för mycket heroin eller blåsa skallen av sig för att skriva in sig i rockhistorien. Hans röst och hans musik gjorde det åt honom.
Mats Rydström
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