Tim Buckley

Buckley whizzed through a bunch of different styles in his approximately decade-long career, and was always an album-oriented artist. That makes the assembly of a best-of collection a difficult task to fulfill without omitting much of the context of what made the singer special. Still, Morning Glory does a pretty good job of touching upon highlights of his work, aided by the generous running time, with two CDs and 33 songs that add up to about two-and-a-half hours of music. It does concentrate on his most accessible tunes, drawing most heavily from his earliest albums and shorter songs, pitching in four tracks from late-'60s live recordings that were not released until long after his death. There is nothing at all, in fact, from his least commercial effort, 1970's Lorca (although "I Had a Talk With My Woman" is identified as coming from Lorca in the track list, it in fact is taken from Live at the Troubadour 1969). As is proper, his final albums, in which both his material and voice were in decline, are lightly represented. There's just one previously unreleased track, though it's a goodie: the legendary solo version of "Song to the Siren" that Buckley performed on an episode of The Monkees, with a much sparer arrangement than was used when it was included on 1970's Starsailor, as well as a different lyric. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide