Grace

Lover You Should've... is a personal dream song for me. I just love the way it builds up. Mojo Pin is an ecclectic but very satisfying song that takes me on journey's rarely managed by other bands (early U2 and Radiohead are the exceptions here) and Last Goodbye is so damn sad! (but very good)This is truly a great album.

If you no have, you loose. Simple really.

Sadly, this was Buckley's only official release, save "Sketches," a double disc which captured Buckley's sessions for his second album. His career was cut short short due to a drowning accident that left him dead at age 31. Particularly tragic is that Buckley's father, the equally prolific Tim Buckley died young as well and haunted Jeff throughout his short life. For further insight into both men, the book "Dream Brother" by David Browne is particularly knowledgeable and well-researched.

It might be easy to remember the handsome, staggeringly charismatic, and tragically fatalistic Buckley as an iconoclastic figure of Rock 'N' Roll; the Kurt Cobain who never was. But the music Buckley left behind is far more dominant than any iconoclastic quality he had.

Jeff Buckley left the musical world with a collection of 10 moody, spirited, brutally honest, even touching reflections on love, spirituality, and most chillingly, given his tragic fate, mortality. The title track is particularly lugubrious, with Buckley ruminating over the appeal of death: "And the rain is falling/I believe my time has come/It reminds me of the pain/I might leave behind."

Many have described Buckley's voice as "angelic." Perhaps this description can be attributed to his lack of natural limitations. The uniqueness of his multi-octave range was simply otherworldly; in fact, no note was out of reach for Buckley. He was a singer in the true sense of using voice as a handsome instrument, capable of achieving heights few have ventured to since.

If there is Buckley had it was juggling many different genres into one cohesive flow of songs. Buckley's voice handles the shifts beautifully, granting each song an appropriate, confident tone, be it metal ("Eternal Life") acid rock ("Dream Brother") choir music ("Corpus Christi Carol") or jazz ("Lilac Wine").

In virtually every category, Buckley proves his talent; as a guitarist, lyricist, melody-smith, and vocalist. Grace is a brilliant album, bold, effervescent, and endlessly enlightening. Buckley lives on.

It is beauty. It is perfect. It is also ironically indescribable.