Jeff Buckley Grace 180g LP

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time - Rated 147/500!

Jeff Buckley's Grace is a masterpiece. The critically acclaimed 1994 breakthrough is filled with sweeping choruses, bombastic arrangements, searching lyrics, and above all, the richly textured voice of Buckley himself.

On extended slow-burning ballads like 'Lover, You Should've Come Over' and his cover of 'Hallelujah,' Buckley used unrestrained amounts of falsetto and vibrato to create an unearthly longing. His music had a smattering of grunge, a plateful of Led Zeppelin III (check the fierce rocker 'Eternal Life'), and an opulent sense of tragedy. Grace is the only album Buckley released in his lifetime; he died in 1997 after going for a swim in a Memphis river known for its unpredictable currents.

Grace is an audacious debut album, filled with sweeping choruses, bombastic arrangements, searching lyrics, and above all, the richly textured voice of Buckley himself, which resembled a cross between Robert Plant, Van Morrison, and his father Tim. And that's a fair starting point for his music: Grace sounds like a Led Zeppelin album written by an ambitious folkie with a fondness for lounge jazz. At his best - the soaring title track, 'Last Goodbye,' and the mournful 'Lover, You Should've Come Over' - Buckley's grasp met his reach with startling results; at its worst, Grace is merely promising.