Jeff Buckley

In its original form, Buckley's Live at Sin-é release was a mere 26-minute EP. This two-CD deluxe edition radically expands it into a proper album in its own right, with no less than two hours and 37 minutes of running time, throwing in a bonus DVD of 11 minutes of unreleased footage to boot. This is a major archival release in that it adds a substantial amount of material to the discography of a cult singer who released only one full-length album in his lifetime, as well as giving a thorough picture of what he sounded like at the outset of his recording career. At the same time, the general listener who might not be a fully subscribed member of the Buckley cult must be cautioned that when you hear this, you realize there's good reason that these live solo acoustic performances (largely recorded on August 17, 1993, though some were done on July 19, 1993) were so heavily pruned for the initial EP release. Buckley seems yet to have fully found either his singing or songwriting voice, being prone to some overdone histrionics in his vocals and (to a lesser degree) guitar playing. Too, the long between-song monologues and instrumental/vocal farting around are sometimes irritating, and no doubt would have been largely edited out if this were a standard live release rather than a posthumous archival one. What this album does do is illustrate a range of his formative influences, including as it does covers of songs by his heroes Led Zeppelin, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Van Morrison, and Leonard Cohen, all interpreted liberally and idiosyncratically. The DVD, incidentally, includes an interview, covers of Morrison's "The Way Young Lovers Do" (different than the performance of that tune on the CD) and the MC5's "Kick Out the Jams" (not heard on the CD in any form), as well as a Buckley poem, "New Years Prayer," that likewise isn't on the CD. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide