In any consideration of Jeff Buckley's final album, Sketches (For My Sweetheart, The Drunk), which is due in the shops on Monday, there can be only one operative word. And that word is ''sketches''.
For of course, Buckley drowned under heartbreaking circumstances last year in the terrible
mud-brown undertow of the Mississippi. Thus this posthumous album, assembled for the Columbia label by his mother, is merely the most basic outline of what he intended as his finished work.
This seems especially evident on the album's second CD. This offers
work-in-progress lyrics and tantalising glimpses of Jeff's wounded-dove voice, both elements being roughly underpinned by
obviously-temporary studio rhythm tracks.
There are 10 near-completed songs on the first CD, however, all of which bear comparison with the best of those on 1994's swoonsome Grace LP, as well as being powerfully driven by Jeff's sure grasp of what might fancifully be called the (ahem) post-grunge guitar-band ethos.
In other words, Jeff knew when his instrumental collaborators should be cranking it up really high, and when everything should emerge with the delicacy of a whisper.
Not unnaturally, hindsight confers a rueful poignancy on some of the lyrics on Sketches. In particular, it's hard to be sanguine about Jeff's breathy delivery of lines like Am I cursed or am I blessed? I can't tell and Your eyes and body bright inside the waters deep. Ah, poor Jeff . . .
Ultimately, this is an album for Jeff Buckley completists. But then I guess that means all of us who were ever touched by hearing him sing. Because anyone who ever fell in love with Jeff Buckley's voice did so completely, for all time, head over heels.
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