Additional information
Personnel includes: Jeff Buckley (vocals, guitar); Michael Tighe (guitar); Mick Grondahl (bass); Matt Johnson (drums). Released in conjunction with the LIVE IN CHICAGO video (which features a somewhat different song selection), this live album offers a glimpse of Jeff Buckley and his band in full flight, blazing through selections from Buckley's lone studio effort GRACE, as well as previously unreleased material. Buckley was always an inveterate genre-hopper, moving gracefully from gentle jazzy ballads to roaring, Led Zep-inspired rock anthems. However, the lack of outside musicians or studio frippery lends these performances a more consistent flavor than on GRACE. Despite the presence of two guitarists (Buckley and Michael Tighe), and an average song length tending toward the epic, there are hardly any solos here. Buckley's superhuman, octave-leaping voice occupies center stage throughout, whether crooning incantatorially (the Doors-like "Dream Brother"), wailing like Robert Plant gone mad ("Grace"), or moving with quiet transcendence through a breathtakingly beautiful cover medley (Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"/the Smiths' "I Know It's Over"). We're lucky to have this to remember Buckley by, although it ultimately begs futile questions about what else might have been in store had he not passed away so tragically soon.
Reviews
Rolling Stone (5/25/00, p.73) - 3.5 stars out of 5 - "...Features Buckley's most intemperate guitar-rabid work: pushed-to-the-limit renditions of that album's peaks, unreleased raw originals and perversely divergent covers..." Spin (8/00, pp.154-6) - 8 out of 10 - "...Cobbles together an eclectic group of performances recorded from Hamburg to Seattle during 1995 and '96....Buckley could turn his shows into gender-bending cabarets and dramatic sacrilegious services..." Entertainment Weekly (5/12/00, p.78) - "...In full Led Zep bombast mode here, the late singer and his band rip through unreleased originals and noisy takes from Buckley's '94 album, GRACE....unfailingly inspirational....We're lucky these recordings exist..." - Rating: A- Q (6/00, pp.120-1) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...A very human album....the perfection of some of the performances is breathtaking....an increasingly apt [album] title..." CMJ (5/22/00, p.26) - "...Captures Buckley's transcendent, emotionally charged performances with a level of intimacy that few live recordings offer..." Melody Maker (5/30/00, p.57) - 3.5 stars out of 5 - "...There's no doubt he had many talents....Like his father before him, Jeff was capable of placing moments of beauty next to unfocused blather..." Mojo (Publisher) (6/00, p.114) - "...A talent as large and far-reaching as his father's..." NME (Magazine) (12/30/00, p.78) - Ranked #25 in NME's "Top 50 Albums Of The Year". NME (Magazine) (5/13/00, p.35) - "...A fantastic live document of the improvisatory and highly dramatic Jeff. Previously unrecorded tracks [and] incendiary performances by one of the greatest back-up bands..."
