Flak Magazine: Jeff Buckley's So Real, 06.29.07

The first time I had ever heard of Jeff Buckley there was a distinct feeling of nausea. His music was introduced to me via recommendations from friends of friends who I couldn't stand — people who are the living embodiment of the genre of music designated by its tacky emphasis on pain and suffering.

Anguish in music, and in every other variety of art in general, is appealing. It's the best place for it to go, it seems. But not when one's turmoil becomes the only window in on the possibilities of self-expression. Otis Redding, Nick Drake, Miles Davis, Nina Simone and (of course) Sir Bob of Dylan always got past the preciosity and started to address the world with more than adolescent heartbreak on their minds.

Anyway, Buckley was a hero to this clique's set. Phooey, I said. Blegh.

That ill-considered notion didn't last. Two epiphanies set me straight, both of which appear on this belated and somewhat unnecessary collection mostly comprised of songs everybody who might pick it up probably already knows by heart.

There's the surging wistfulness of the opening track. "Last Goodbye" is just meant to be heard alone after a sleepless night while the glow of morning sunlight pummels your eyelids. The words "kiss me" don't sound the same sung by anybody else. He floats and ripples through a soaring bout of resignation and manages to keep the heartbreak at the center of the swoon. Great pop power ensues. It's a perfect introduction to the collection.

The real kicker is the album's centerpiece, Buckley's transcendent, quietly defiant, candlelit reading of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." The tune is durable enough to resist overplaying, no matter how many times it appears in movies or on TV when an emotional swell is called upon. The tentative, elusive lyrics have more than a little to do with accepting life in all its sallowness and sullen regret and claiming it all back in the name of forgiveness and joy.

It's not even a song so much as it is a prayer, made in public to a god who might or might not be there after all. I can remember sitting on my friend's apartment floor, bereft of furniture, having yet another night of drunken soul searching over the amount of life that passed us by as we had endless nights of drunken soul searching. We sat regretful and spellbound, watching the blue glow of the TV set that doubled in our den for a stereo as Buckley's hushed hymn met and absorbed our sorrows and gave us enough to go forward.

I wouldn't pain you, dear reader, with all these anecdotes if I didn't suspect that you're reading this in part because you might have some analogous stories of your own. Jeff Buckley the man was like that, evidently. The liner notes are filled with sincerely felt reminiscences of a guy who ate gyros for breakfast, made Rufus Wainwright ooze with jealousy and helped the great M. Doughty move furnishings into a fifth-floor apartment.

One of the nice perks of this collection is that the alternate takes actually add something to the existing body of work. It's an unusual circumstance for anthologies like this. The acoustic "So Real" is a little more feathery than the operatic and booming album cut. It's been said that Buckley was a childhood fan of Edith Piaf, but I had never had the treat of hearing him dig in to the chanteuse's lovelorn continental warblings until now. The record ends with another splendid rare cut, a cover — Buckley had made a veritable closet industry of making other's silver into his gold, and this one is an utter gem. The Smiths' "I Know It's Over," which discards Morrissey's overly precious quality and makes it harrowing and elegiac. A lovely addition among largely recycled classics.

As for the songs straight from the canon already 10 years old or more, Buckley's surrealistic, occasionally over-morbid lyrics, unstoppably angelic voice and voraciously curious musical appetite are still potent. His synthesis of mid- 90s alt-rock, folkish introspection and Arabic keening wail was groundbreaking enough when it started, and it's unfortunate to report that it still leaves most of his imitators in the dust.

And as for his legend, well, he's the John Keats of pop music.

Aside from the bohemian sensibilties and prodigious technical skills, there's the humility and vulnerability and the feistiness (watch him sweat and sneer through a raucous cover of the MC5's battle cry "Kick Out the Jams" live on DVD and you'll see what I mean) underlying all that trembles in the work. Then there's the premonitions of early demise, popping up like driftwood amid the ardor: "I'm only here for a moment" and, more specifically, "the sea will take me." Shelley, not Keats, actually died in the water as Buckley did, but Shelley always wanted to be Keats, so it still comes full circle.

As romantic as it is to reflect on a drowned genius, it also puts one face to face with an incredible waste. It reminds us once again of something greatest hits compliations just don't quite accomplish. Part of genius is about survival. As the poet himself said, in a poem that could've been a Buckley song title:

She dwells with Beauty — Beauty that must die; / and joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching pleasure nigh. / Turning to Poison while the bee-mouth sips: / Ay, In the very temple of delight / Veil'd Melancholy has her sovern shrine / Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tounge / Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine; / His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, / And be among her cloudly trophies hung.

— Matt Hanson (junglegroove@gmail.com)