261. Tim Buckley - Greetings From L.A. (1972)
















Track Listing

1. Move With Me
2. Get On Top
3. Sweet Surrender
4. Night Hawkin'
5. Devil Eyes
6. Hong Kong Bar
7. Make It Right

Review

Just when we'd discarded Timmy as being a whiny, yet talented troubadour, he messes with our mind. Tim is well known for his reinvention shennanigans, but none of them were as radical as this one, and good on him. Tim manages to reinvent himself as a funky R&B and soulful player, of course this is all tinged with a nice rock mood and his typically dreary lyrics.

Although the lyrics are still quite depressing, the music behind them makes them much more supportable than on some of his previous offerings where the music just accentuated what didn't need accentuating, of course it's never cheery, but it has rhythm to it. It is really hard to compare this with the previous Tim Buckley albums on the list, it is so different that if it wasn't for his distinctive voice it would be hard to say that it is the same artist.

In the end it is a very worthy reinvention of an artist which seemed to have gotten stale after a couple of unsuccesful releases. I am pretty sure, however, that this was not at all what his fans were expecting, emo-kid goes funky is quite a shock, but a really good one if you are meant to respect Buckley. Of course there were commercial pressures for Tim to change his style for this album, but you can see that that is not the prime consideration, as there is considerable talent and love for the songs displayed here. So get it from Amazon UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Sweet Surrender
2. Get On Top
3. Hong Kong Bar
4. Devil Eyes

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

(...) with his finances depleting and craving for recognition ripe, he released three albums which combined rock with a soul/funk direction - Greetings from L.A., Sefronia and Look at the Fool. These albums failed to become a commercial success. Fundamentally Tim was unhappy with the systematic and shallow R&B structure of the lyrics and music, despite being a fan of the genre. His distaste with bowing to commercial pressures from Frank Zappa's Discreet Records soon left him without a recording contract.

Sweet Surrender with a slideshow: