Jeff Buckley - Sketches (For My Sweetheart the Drunk)
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Free Music Notes for Sketches (For My Sweetheart the Drunk)
Free Music Review: A Two Disc Masterpiece : It just might be better than "Grace"...
Hit: 5 Stars
I cannot believe the negative and unfortunate reviews here for this album. Do so many people really feel cheated by this CD, calling it a bunch of rough demos? That is just insane!
Heres the thing - this is a very superior collection of songs that in no way can be called demos. Just because they aren't of the highly polished variety such as the ones on 'Grace' in no way makes these recordings inferior.
Take for instance the second track - 'Everybody here wants you' - is there a single more touching torch song in the entire Jeff Buckley catalog? I don't think so. What a song. What a melody. What a voice! That song alone is the worth the $15 asking price for this CD.
Needless to say, I am a huge Jeff Buckley fan, and consider 'Grace' to be the greatest male album ever recorded. However, repeated listening to this double disc might make you wonder if THIS isn't Jeff's best. It is much more musically versatile when compared to 'Grace', and its also very diverse in his vocal stylings. Theres rock (very Led Zep), alternative (very cold play), soul (very Maxwell), love-pop (very Barbra Streisand), and blues (very Nina Simone). Tell me of another album that does all these genres this well.
People, this is a masterpiece and a necessary addition to your collection. Get it today. Don't let this one slip you by.
Five Stars - A timeless classic.
Free Music Review: For Jeff Buckley worshippers only
Hit: 1 Stars
As the title states, these were sketches for an album which was never made due to Jeff's accidental drowning. These are VERY ROUGH sketches. According to those who knew him, these sketches were nowhere near the state Jeff would have wanted them to be recorded and published. Most are incredibly unmelodic, and Jeff's voice is quite harsh and unrefined on the majority. Despite loving Grace and Live at Sin-E, I found this music very difficult to listen to and with very little worth remembering. It actually tarnishes my image of Jeff.Free Music Review: Half polished, half sketches...
Hit: 4 Stars
Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk is so good, and, at the same time, so hard to listen to. Jeff Buckley had planned to go into the studio to record his sophomore album, My Sweetheart the Drunk, in June of 1997. He died in May. This album, a two-CD compilation of three studio sessions and a fourth unofficial recording session, was released posthumously.
The first disc, a mix of the studio sessions sounds like a real album. The second disc has a few polished songs, but is mostly a sampling of Buckley's rough four-track recordings. He sounds like he was playing with where to go next, and it's a tragedy that the album will never be fully realized. (That sense of unfinished business gives the CD its amended title.)
As the audiophile who introduced me to Buckley said, "It's no Grace." Well, no, it isn't. You shouldn't expect it to be, either. Not everyone is as fortunate as, say, Warren Zevon, who, after being diagnosed with lung cancer in 2002, made an album before he died, knowing it would be his last.
Buckley wasn't finished. I suppose you could make the argument that no artist ever is. But, listening to this album, you can't help but wonder what might have been.
As his mother says in the liner notes, "If Jeff had lived and chosen to erase these sketches, it would have been a relative minor loss. He could have written hundreds of songs and made dozens of albums in their place. Unfortunately, God had something else in mind for my son, and for me."
Free Music Review: Disc 2 is just AMAZING!
Hit: 5 Stars
This CD is one of my favourite CD's of all time. You people saying that the disc 2 is not worth listening to, you haven't got it, have you..? When disc 2 really starts with "haven't you heard" (the first two songs are remixes from disc one), it takes you to a totally unique experience all the way to the last chord is played.
I feel dragged into a spiritual world in a way I've never been before when listening to this record. It's so raw and naked that it took me a long time to like it, but when I first did, it just got better and better for each time I listened to it, and it still does. Jeff Buckley is truly one of the most gifted and talented musicians of all times, if not THE most gifted. My favourites on the disc 2 are perhaps "we could be so happy baby (if we wanted to be)", "murder suicide meteor slave", "demon john", and "Jewel Box", but all of the songs, except "your flesh is so nice" perhaps, are just unbelievable.
I do not dare to think about what this could have become if he got to finish it.. Jeff Buckley has, with all of his music, added new aspects into my life, and I am forever grateful.
But it surely takes time to like the second disc, you will probably think it's just weird and far too raw if you don't give it a real try, but if you are a Buckley fan (which you all should be), listen to it until you like it, and trust me, you won't regret it. I can't get it out of my cd-player, not even to play Grace!!
By the way, the first disc also rocks!!("Vancouver" is just soo cool!!)
Free Music Review: The masterpiece even Buckley missed?
Hit: 5 Stars
I'll add a few thoughts for the person considering this CD, particularly who only knows the album Grace: The first disc of this set is a relatively finished product produced for Buckley by Tom Verlaine (with some subsequent minor clean-up). The second disc consists mainly of rough drafts for unrecorded songs, and should be considered as such. The second CD is not easy listening, and is really for the most devoted fans only (as is fully disclosed in the liner notes).
It is said that Buckley was dissatisfied with the Verlaine sessions. I recall that Buckley's biographer reported that Verlaine told Buckley, essentially: "If you don't like the tapes, destroy them, or they'll find their way into the public eye eventually." Buckley didn't destroy them. He and Verlaine worked on them in Memphis, then Buckley set them aside.
Buckley chose Verlaine to produce the sessions. Verlaine produced Buckley's music with a far more stripped-down sound then you find on Grace. Buckley and his band (save for the drummers on the tapes) had been touring for quite some time, and were deeply attuned to one another's playing. They had a wonderful sound, simple, centered on electric guitars (played with relatively few effects), bass, and drums, supporting Buckley's vocals. This is the sound that Verlaine, and perhaps Buckley, wanted to capture. And they did, very well.
I describe the sound as "simple"--what I mean is that the ingredients were as straight-forward as your basic bar band. What they did with those ingredients was 10 levels beyond your basic bar band. Buckley had developed into a first-rate writer of deceptively complex songs. A song, like "The Sky is a Landfill," might start out rather like a basic rock 'n roll song, but pretty soon you're in another place...the verse-verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure generally vanishes; the 2 guitars (sometimes more) and bass play off of one another (with considerable panache and skill) into different layers and blends, and Buckley sings his serpentine melodies, unflinchingly exploring his uniquely wide range and timbres. It still rocks, and often pretty hard, too, but it requires, and greatly rewards, attention. (There are several ballads as well--not surprising for Buckley, who was a master of the form.)
None of this is utterly different from Grace, but Grace was more heavily worked in the studio, with considerable multi-tracking of vocal parts, multiple and various-sounding electric and acoustic guitars (some "treated"), some keyboards, strings, etc. And Grace is terrific. But so is Sketches...even though Sketches is thought to be something of a rough draft. In terms of the way it sounds to this listener, it's not that rough--certainly no "first draft." Maybe more of a "works in progress," by a band that, like any really active, working band, is always somewhat "in progress."
But what about Buckley's dissatisfaction? Is it possible that we're dealing with an end result that, though excellent otherwise, just didn't match his vision for it, and thus simply disappointed him at the time? Is it possible that he would have turned to it later and been pleasantly surprised? We'll never know. But he didn't destroy it. And now we have it, and can be grateful for it.