Live at Sin-é: Legacy Edition (2003)
34 tracks, 157 minutes (2CD)
Spotify · iTunes
In the summer of 1993, Jeff Buckley recorded a couple of his sets at one of his usual haunts, the Sin-é coffee house in New York. Four of the best cuts were taken from those sets and assembled into the Live at Sin-é EP later that year, to get the world ready for his debut album Grace that was to be released the year after. The tracks on that EP were beautiful, but we had to wait until 2003 – six years after his untimely death – to hear more of those legendary sets as this ‘Legacy Edition.’ And more there is: there's over two-and-a-half hour’s worth of material in this double album. That’s a lot of listening, and totally worth it.
It’s a very vulnerable position. Just him and an electric guitar, in the corner of what was literally just a small café. The setting lends itself to the music, which goes through a lot of emotions throughout the set, but always retains that same vulnerability. His guitar-work is generally understated but lets through glimpses of brilliance, and his voice is just astonishing. He can blast and bark when necessary, but then he switches it up and becomes soft and delicate. His range is massive, and it’s when he uses his falsetto – soaring but fragile – that the neck-hairs really stand on end.
His studio stuff is great, but this concert shows a bit of a different side. I suppose Jeff Buckley would usually be put into some ‘rock’ box, but he does absolutely all sorts here. He proves himself just as talented as a jazz singer, in blues or folk idioms. Out of the 21 songs on the recording, 15 of them are covers, everything from Led Zeppelin to Édith Piaf. He’s just so wildly versatile. Earlier this month, I referred to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan as ‘simply the greatest singer ever recorded.’ It would seem that Jeff would agree. In one of the many bits of chat recorded between the songs, he remarks “It's Nusrat, and he's my Elvis. That's my guy. I listen to him everyday...I know his nickname as a child” …and then he goes on to cover one of Nusrat’s pieces ‘Yeh Jo Halka Halka Saroor Hai’! In Urdu! Just guitar and voice! It’s frankly absurd and I love it.
There are so many tracks I can mention here: ‘Je N’en Connais Pas La Fin,’ ‘The Way Young Lovers Do,’ a spellbinding version of ‘Strange Fruit,’ the ballsy a cappella opening ‘Be Your Husband,’ and that’s not even mentioning his originals...but I’m supposed to be writing one of these a day, and it would take forever to mention every cool bit on the album. At one point he says to the audience “I’m a ridiculous person...you’re lucky you paid no money to see me” – damn right they’re lucky, but not just because of the free entry.
No comments:
Post a Comment