Check Your Blind Spots: Week Two
A part of becoming a music nerd is going back and retracing the annals of music history to discover (or rediscover) music that, while long since canonized, has yet to properly grace your ears. Being born in the early 80’s means that there are decades and decades of music the preceded me that I needed to discover, especially since I didn’t really start giving a crap about music (not counting Weird Al and early Beach Boys) until I was a teen – the mid-90s. When making the conscious decision to become a voracious music listener, however, I had to choose certain streams of music over others, leading me to totally miss out on zeitgeist-capturing artists in my very own time. You chose grunge, I went with pop punk. You went with Smashing Pumpkins, I went with Weezer.
Despite this, I have had years to retrace my steps on several of these key figures of the mid-to-late 90s. There is one glaring omission, however, I have yet to pay any attention to up to this point: the late and many would say, great, Jeff Buckley. Most egregiously, while several of my friends and peers became obsessives and loyalists, I never gave two shits about his 1994 album, Grace.
Now it’s not like I avoided Grace completely. Buckley’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s (and really, John Cale’s version of) “Hallelujah” is ubiquitous and rightfully so. Buckley’s rendition is truly one of the most beautiful and moving performances of any song ever, no hyperbole. The song opens with a sigh that indicates the gravity of what’s to come and the song delivers, even after it’s been bastardized and played to death (“Oh, it’s that nice song from Shrek,” said your mom). Buckley’s voice is radiant and powerful, emoting wildly without ever becoming saccharine (and even if it did, the song would be able to withstand it). I remember when I was in university I would turn off all the lights in my dorm room and just take the song in, letting it speak to me in whatever way it needed to at the time. Totally dramatic and emo, I know, but this song demands a certain degree of devotion and deliberateness when listening to it.
But while I was and will likely always be mesmerized by this cover, I never opened myself up to any more of Buckley’s music, despite people’s insistence of his greatness. Part of that reason may be the fact that the music snob in me knew and resented Buckley’s excessively dramatic descendants (Travis, Coldplay, Radiohead, Rufus Wainwright) too much to allow me to give Buckley a real chance (which is like punishing the Beatles for Oasis, or avoiding the Buzzcocks because of Sum 41 – not that I’m comparing Radiohead to Sum 41). Another reason for avoiding him is because Buckley was an artist adopted by my older sister and her peers. After finding my own musical taste, I had very little interest in following their lead anymore, meaning that all subsequent musical journeys would mean I had to sidestep the likes of Buckley, Bjork and even early Radiohead to a certain extent. It also didn’t and still doesn’t help that my mom is a big fan.
Most importantly, however, I felt that somewhere down the line, Buckley’s early death only bloated Grace’s reputation. Early reviews of the album (before Buckley’s drowning death in 1997) talk about “promise” and “potential,” but there are very few unqualified raves. Looking at past articles on the album, reviewers rave about the quality and range of Buckley’s voice, but decry the album’s inconsistency and unsteady footing. Still, these days, Grace is seen as a generation-defining triumph, and it has been that way pretty much since Buckley’s passing. That kind of “the dead are perfect” mythology is a totally real phenomenon. Even the most thoughtful and realistic eulogizers of Michael Jackson have been trumpeting the supremacy of his early solo albums despite the fact that, as big of pop icon as Jackson was, he never actually released an album devoid of bum tracks (and Al Sharpton’s “There wasn’t nothing weird about your daddy” comment was just insane – whether Jackson was a kiddy diddler or not, even one round of cosmetic surgery makes him a weirdo in my book), but I digress. Truth is, I didn’t want to believe the hype because while Grace may have been that album for a generation, it wasn’t that album for me and listening to it 15 years too late wasn’t likely to change that.
So upon listening to the album, it doesn’t seem likely that this will become an especially important album in my life. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a very good album in its own right.
The good news right off the bat is that “Hallelujah” isn’t the only masterpiece on the album. The title track soars, with Buckley’s pristine voice sailing dramatically and immaculately over swelling strings, crashing guitar chimes and a lilting drumbeat. Being a guitar guy, however, it’s Gary Lucas’ six-string during the intro (both the hypnotic arpeggios and the lovely, uplifting theme) and the dramatic crescendo at the end that impress me most. Buckley’s voice is undeniably beautiful and the melody is fascinatingly ethereal, but Lucas’ guitar lines give the song a real avant-garde edge, elevating it from just being another conduit for Buckley’s vaunted vocal tricks. This song bests even the most intelligent alt-rock of the time. “Grace” immediately stands out on the album and will likely become a lifetime favorite.
That’s not all. “Last Goodbye” starts with a groovy grandeur reminiscent of early Jane’s Addiction or even Led Zeppelin (the Zep – and specifically Robert Plant – comparisons are pretty apt through the whole album, a good thing with the exception of a few eye-roll worthy lyrics) before Buckley’s voice heads off into near R&B territory. While Buckley’s pipes may be a little too free-form at times (the guy had a three-and-a-half octave reach and he lets it show), the song’s central groove made it an easy candidate to be the album’s standout single. It’s also the one song that feels most traditionally alt-rock (read: minimal jazz flourishes).
The songs on Grace actually fare best the more straight-forward they are. “Lover, You Should Come Over” floats by on an intermittently pushed 6/8 waltz giving the song a gospel feel that actually compliments Buckley’s vocal acrobatics. The whole thing feels relaxed and unfussed, while “So Real” builds to the album’s most straight-forward and memorable chorus, making it an easy entry point for newcomers like me. True, the verses are a bit of a mess with its quasi-spoken word reading and it’s wayward chord pattern, but the chorus truly explodes into something magnificent.
On an album full of epically bombastic tracks, album closer “Dream Brother” perhaps fares best, with the band in constant crescendo (I love that menacing guitar line) and the elastic melody providing the sole vocal moment that doesn’t actually require someone as skilled as Buckley to take the lead. With some big, toppling drum fills and grandiose, clanging guitars, “Dream Brother” catches Buckley in full Rock God mode until the whole thing fades away with Buckley’s other-worldly falsetto.
Of course that voice is the album’s central theme. Unfortunately, I’m very rarely moved by a beautiful voice alone. Which is often where Grace gets into trouble. Too often, even on some of the album’s best tracks, it becomes too much about “The Voice.” Opener “Mojo Pin” has Buckley running the gamet on his ability, but the music is so jazzy and free form (read: jumbled and unfocused) that I can listen to it a dozen times and still not take anything away from the experience. Likewise, songs like Buckley’s readings of Benjamin Britten’s “Corpus Christi Carol” and Nina Simone’s “Lilac Wine” are lovely, I’m sure, but with so little going on in the way of a sonic foundation, I tend to lose interest. Maybe the problem is that I’m actually not that big of a fan of Buckley’s voice. The talent is there, obviously, but there’s so much pomp and bravado going on that my sensibilities feel attacked. If Buckley would write melodies that showed his gift, that would be one thing, but all too often it seems that the melodies are merely vague concepts for Buckley to run circles around. They’re an afterthought, really. For some that’s fine, but it’s a point of contention for my ears.
However, as much as some of the songs may be melodically and musically underdeveloped, nothing on the album feels as egregious as “Eternal Life,” the album’s supposed “rocker.” With a big aggro bass riff and some distorted-but-not-too-distorted guitars, “Eternal Life” sees Buckley completing his swath of genres (jazz, folk, gospel, big-time important pop) with an attempt at a Jawbox-style art punk. Unfortunately, “Eternal Life” sounds less like the lauded Dischord band then they do some small town high school funk rock band whose sole musical point of reference are pseudo-spiritual rockers like Live and Collective Soul. Here’s a sampling of the lyrics:
Racist everyman, what have you done?
Man, you’ve made a killer of your unborn son.
Crown my fear your king at the point of a gun.
All I want to do is love everyone.
It’s pretty amazingly deep stuff. And it gets better:
There’s no time for hatred, only questions:
What is love? Where is happiness? What is life? Where is peace?
When will I find the strength to bring me release?
And all the world joined hands and sang as one. Thanks for the insight, small town spiritual rockers.
While the music and lyrics chart one disaster after another, Buckley once again overcompensates, hollering and strutting over the song while the band lays down a “real hard” “groove.”
But one junk song and a few marginal pieces of filler don’t make Grace a bust; it just doesn’t seem like the masterpiece that so many regard it as. Grace is the work of a young performer essentially throwing everything at the wall and finding a whole lot of things sticking. At it’s best, Grace lives up to its reputation: an almost impossibly talented man - with a voice that is as malleable as it is evocative – performing songs that can live up to and even, in my opinion, sometimes exceed Buckley’s vocal contribution. At it’s worst, however, Grace sounds like Buckley’s exceedingly pretentious artistic growing pains. But in the end, what’s good here is truly great. I’m sure that for most of the album’s fans, what’s less-than-great here gradually grew on them (“Come for ‘Hallelujah,’ stay for ‘Eternal Life’”) making this one of the most beloved albums of the 90s (my guess for what would have happened next goes something like this: something slightly better than The Bends, then something slightly better than A Rush Of Blood To The Head, then probably a whole bunch of things slightly worse than A Rush Of Blood To The Head).
Is Grace’s reputation overblown? As an album, yeah, probably. But on a song to song basis, Grace, even if it is only the sum of its parts, is still something truly special. I’m glad to have finally made its acquaintance.
July 17th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
You started by pointing out that you missed out on one of the greatest periods in music history. The “grunge” movement changed music in an inaudible way. Mainstream music at the time was like a lightbulb, even though it was invented for light 80 percent of its energy went to heat, the popular bands of the time spent most of their energy on image and the labels pushed that. Musicians were consistently separating themselves from their audience. Grunge ended that. In Nirvana you could see yourself in the performance. Kurt, Chris Cornell, James Iha, Black Francis, Kevin Shields, these guys were like your buddies or classmates. Grunge brought music back to the audience and inspired the masses to become a part of the movement.
One of the great things about Buckley was his stage presence. He spent so much time performing to smaller crowds that he was able to focus on the music and then get passed that and focus on introspectively performing the music. His albums and what he created in his live show were two different things entirely. “Last Goodbye” and his Live in Chicago DVD are good examples. I was always an admirer but never really appreciated him until after he had died.
As a fellow guitar player you have to be impressed with his progressions and inventiveness.
Good article.
July 27th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
About Grunge: Grunge didn’t abolish “image” first bands, it just changed the image. Half of those second wave grunge bands were probably into hair metal only a couple yeas earlier anyway. And it’s not like grunge all the sudden brought the artists down to the audience. There’s a wellspring of early 80’s hardcore bands that would be happy to point out that “everydude” rock wasn’t Kurt’s invention. Nirvana, a great band certainly, were the benefactors of a music industry that suddenly realized there was a gold mine in the independent music scene. Grunge was a breath of fresh air in an generally awful time for music, but honestly, but they broke out because some of the other great rock hopes of the time were either too hard (Faith No More), too weird (Sonic Youth), too scary (Fishbone), too stridently independent (Fugazi) or simply not rocking enough (Teenage Fanclub). Sure, grunge was the great rock hope, but something had to be and it just so happened that a lamely named Pac-Northwest music scene won the lottery. On top of that, three out of the five names you listed above were not affiliated with grunge bands (traditional definition grunge, that is). When I think of grunge (and I rarely do), it’s Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, Soundgarden and then all the shit that came after them.
As for Buckley, you’re right about Buckley’s guitar playing - even more than his voice, it’s what I’ve been enjoying the most. I’ve been hearing a lot about some of those live performance DVDs and albums. I hear that what he put to tape and what he presented live were two totally different things, which doesn’t surprise me because I really feel that a lot of the songs on the album lacked an discernable structure, which, to me, is a drawback.
September 11th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Write more and it will right more. The world is wrong! Fix the broekn with your words.