|
|
|
Jeff Buckley - Grace Around the World
| Popmatters |
|
Like the freak accidents that stripped the world of Sam Cooke and Otis Redding at crucial points in their artistic growth, Jeff Buckley’s Memphis drowning almost exactly 12 years ago feels unfair in an eerily depressing way. Like Cooke and Redding before him, Buckley exhibited such a transcendent level of talent during his brief recording career. Listening to his music now, one’s mind fills with thoughts of how improbably and suddenly his life ended and overwhelms in a devastating way that can be rivaled by very few works of art in history. In 2009, to celebrate the 15-year anniversary of Buckley’s only official studio album, 1994’s near-masterpiece Grace, Sony Legacy Recordings chose to release the live DVD/CD collection, Grace Around the World. It compiles live performances filmed from various locations along Buckley’s 1994-1995 world tour to promote his latest release. Each original Grace track is accounted for in the live performances used on Grace Around the World, with the exception of “Corpus Christi Carol”, which has been supplanted by the more-frequently performed “What Will You Say”. The ten performances, including the main feature of the DVD, are interspersed with interview footage of Buckley discussing topics usually pertaining to the songs in the sequence they appear. Bonus DVD features include extra performances of the songs “Grace”, “So Real” and “Last Goodbye”, as well as an instrumental version of “Vancouver” (which appeared, with lyrics, on the posthumous Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk), a VH1 “Star Tours” featurette and a 1995 bus interview with Merri Cyr....full text |
|
|
| Rollingstone |
| Jeff Buckley's soaring falsetto was a beautiful freak, and force, of nature, its legacy still echoing in singers from Thom Yorke to Antony. Any addition to his tiny catalog is notable. But this live DVD/CD set is more than barrel scrapings. Approximating the track list from his LP Grace, it's as thrilling as the original, with devastating performances from 1994 and 1995 that stretch nearly every phrase into cliffhanger improvisatory drama. And to see Buckley in all his self-possessed glory, trilling like a diva or waxing profound in a contrived TV interview, is to see an artist at his white-light peak....full text |
|
|
| Allmusic |
| Jeff Buckley didn't leave behind an extensive body of work: a live EP; his debut LP, Grace; a handful of B-sides; plus an unfinished album. After his untimely death, all this material has seen reissue in some form -- a deluxe version of the debut, a posthumous collection of the incomplete sophomore album -- which meant the only things still left in the vault were more live performances, specifically the ones he gave for TV stations across the globe. Sony/Legacy's 2009 set Grace: Live Around the World rounds up the bulk of these performances and offers them as a CD/DVD set, with the CD offering 12 of the 14 performances on the DVD (a "Last Goodbye" from a January 1995 session for MTV's 120 Minutes and "Vancouver" from the U.K. MTV's Most Wanted from two months later being the tunes left behind). The DVD also has a music video of "Hallelujah," a VH1 Behind the Scenes "Star Tours," and an interview, making this a clearinghouse of most of the existing broadcast footage of Buckley from the first months of 1995, something that by its very definition is designed for diehards, the diehards who will also appreciate the addition of the very good hourlong documentary Amazing Grace on the one-CD/two-DVD deluxe version of Grace: Live Around the World, especially as it focuses on his music more than his myth. The same could be said of this set at large: it captures him as a working musician, pushing his first album hard, trying to get his name and music known, not caring about anything outside of the moment -- all things that offer a potent, stirring reminder of Buckley's power and grace....full text |
|
|
Go to "Jeff Buckley " lyrics