Thursday, January 08, 2009

780. Jeff Buckley - Grace (1994)


















Track Listing


1. Mojo Pin
2. Grace
3. Last Goodbye
4. Lilac Wine
5. So Real
6. Hallelujah
7. Lover, You Should've Come Over
8. Corpus Christi Carol
9. Eternal Life
10. Dream Brother
11. Forget Her

Review

People who like Jeff Buckley don't just like him, they love him. For them Grace is the be all and end all of music in the last 15 years and everything else is not "as good as Grace". Well I just like it.

Let's get this straight, it is a very good album, Jeff is bucking the trend of grunge and opening the door for a myriad of acts from Damien Rice to Antony and the Johnsons. But it is not the best thing since sliced bread... and actually sliced bread isn't that great, it goes mouldy and hard faster than non-sliced bread. If your bread is not sliced you just throw away a slice on the side exposed to the air and the rest will be fine. Trust me, I bake.

Another thing which is telling about this album is the fact that the two best tracks are covers. This shows that Jeff was first and foremost a great interpreter of music, if he had lived longer his own composition might have achieved a level where they would be as good as his judiciously picked covers. But he hadn't gotten there yet. So a really great album, but not a 10.

Track Highlights

1. Hallelujah
2. Lilac Wine
3. Grace
4. Lover, You Should've Come Over

Final Grade


9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Grace has been listed as a highly rated album in many popular magazines, such as Q magazine, where readers voted Grace the 75th greatest album of all time; the same vote was taken again towards the end of 2005, this time Grace being placed at 13. In 2003, the album was ranked number 303 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2006, Mojo Magazine named Grace the #1 Modern Rock Classic of all Time. It was also rated as Australia's second favourite album on My Favourite Album, a television special done by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation aired on December 3, 2006. Grace re-entered the Top 50 album charts in Australia at number 44 for the week of the 29th of January to the 5th of February 2007, 13 years after its original release date. It is currently certified 6x Platinum in Australia.

Great live version of Hallelujah:


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you... I've been saying since this came out that it's good but not worthy of the mega-praise it gets. Eternal Life sounds like a lost Soundgarden track. And how have they NOT made a movie about him starring James Franco?

Anonymous said...

I think that a nine is quite generous for this album. It has moments where the first track foreshadows Radiohead and for this it deserves a litte respect. but the covers are adequate at best I've heard more compelling covers of both track, and then there's the fact that it's at times just plain annoying