Jeff Buckley – Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk (1998)

I'm sure you know the tragic story of Jeff Buckley - son of 60s singer songwriter Tim Buckley, whom Jeff met only once before he died. Then in 1995, seemingly from nowhere, he released the absolute classic album, Grace.

Jeff died in a drowning accident in the Mississippi river, in 1997. He had been working on his follow up album to Grace, provisionally entitled My Sweetheart The Drunk, with produced Tom Verlaine.

He had been unhappy with the results of the Verlaine recordings, and planned to scrap them and start afresh, having come to Memphis to work on new recordings. On his death, Sony planned to release the Verlaine recordings anyway, but his mother, Mary Guibert prevented this happening. After much legal toing and froing, she compromised with Sony, that this 2CD set be released - CD1 being the Verlaine recordings, while CD2 was the demos and recordings Jeff had already made a fresh start on - deliberately unenhanced.

So, was Jeff Buckley a lost genius, whose death robbed the world of decades of fine music, or did he get lucky with a superb debut? Intriguingly, I don't think this album answers that question.

Firstly, the Verlaine recordings. These, to my mind, would have made a worthy second album. Perhaps not eclipsing Grace, but certainly not disappointing Buckley fans. The Sky Is A Landfill opens, a slow, guitar heavy number which displays Buckley's talents both as singer and guitar, swiftly followed by Everyone Here Wants You, showing tones of 70s Motown, it's absolutely beautiful. Also strong here are the rocking Nightmares By The Sea and the stunning New Year's Prayer, reminding the listener of the devotional music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

And while there's nothing really disappointing here, several of the songs feel incomplete (You & I, Opened Once and Morning Theft) with only the latter feeling on the verge of a classic. The only cover here is Inger Lorre's Yard Of Blonde Girls, a grungy rock number which is solid.

But for some reason Buckley was unhappy with these tracks, and that's what brought him to Memphis to work on these demos. CD2 starts with versions of Nightmares By The Sea, and New Year's Prayer, neither radically reworked compared to CD1. Most of these recordings are much more raw than those on CD1, which doesn't work for the newer songs. Haven't You Heard is fairly solid, and you can hear something there, but I Know We Could Be So Happy is more of a struggle, and Murder Suicide Meteor Slave is so far from a viable song.

There's an interesting stripped down version of Genesis' Back In New York City, but that's followed by the unformed Gunshot Glitter, then Demon Jack, neither particularly inspiring. There are signs of something in Your Flesh Is So Nice, and Jewel Box, while this CD ends with a live version of Red Hayes' and Jack Rhodes country classic Satisfied Mind, from 1992, a throwaway cover.

The Verlaine album would have been a worthy follow up to Grace, and had Buckley thought so, he probably wouldn't have been in Memphis on that fateful day. But there's not much of a feel of something better in the released demos.

Link to album tracks

4* - comfortably for CD 1, but only a 3* for the demos.