I Hear Your Words And I Know Your Pain

A couple of friends raved about Jeff Buckley in the mid-1990s but I didn't start to properly listen to his music until I purchased the Legacy Edition reissues of Grace and Live At Sin-é in the early 2000s. 

 

From there, I went on to buy the two posthumous albums, the Mystery White Boy live collection and the collated 'sketches' and unfinished recordings for Jeff's second album, My Sweetheart The Drunk. 

Surprisingly, Jeff has only appeared here twice previously: his song Last Goodbye was part of a Faye Dunaway themed post; the other was a snippet of between song banter live at Sin-é in New York, one of 19 tracks crammed into a 145 second selection.

Whilst this is the first dedicated Jeff Buckley selection, it leans heavily on his interpretations of other people's songs, six of the nine songs being cover versions, half of them live performances.

There's an aching melancholy in Jeff's voice, guitar notes and stripped back sound. The opening cover of Back In N.Y.C. by Genesis, one of the last songs Jeff recorded before his untimely death at age 30, is clearly a 'sketch' though I can imagine that the finished version would have been refined but not embellished. The selection closes, perhaps inevitably, with Jeff's version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, it's soaring yet understated beauty undiminished by it's ubiquity.

 

1) Back In N.Y.C. (Cover of Genesis) (1997)

2) The Man That Got Away (Live @ Great American Music Hall, San Francisco) (Cover of Judy Garland) (1995)

3) If You See Her, Say Hello (Live @ Sin-é, New York) (Cover of Bob Dylan) (1993)

4) Dream Brother (Alternate Take) (1994)

5) I Know It's Over (Live Radio Session for WNEW, New York - not broadcast) (Cover of The Smiths) (1995)

6) Grace (Live @ Palais Theatre, Melbourne, Australia) (1996)

7) Drown In My Own Tears (Live @ Sin-é, New York) (Cover of Ray Charles & His Band) (1993)

8) Haven't You Heard (1997)

9) Hallelujah (Album Version) (Cover of Leonard Cohen) (1994)

1994: Grace: 9

1998: Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk: 1, 8

2000: Mystery White Boy: 2, 6

2003: Live At Sin-é (Legacy Edition): 3, 7

2004: Grace (Legacy Edition): 4

2007: So Real: Songs From Jeff Buckley: 5

I Hear Your Words And I Know Your Pain (51:08) (Box) (Mega)