For Collectors and Completists

Almost two decades since the untimely death of Jeff Buckley, the law of diminishing returns has definitely asserted itself. If You and I  (out March 11) hasn’t scraped the bottom of the posthumous barrel, it comes pretty close. The latest release of early demos, recorded in 1993 after he had signed with Columbia, offers some historical value and critical illumination, but they’re like reading a novelist’s early notebooks instead of his breakthrough novel. 

Yes, Buckley could sing Dylan and Sly, Zeppelin, and the Smiths, but that’s no reason why he should. Perhaps the sequencing is part of the problem, since the first cut is the worst — a reading of “Just Like a Woman” that is both mannered and wobbly, beginning with “No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-nobody. . .” and then flailing for the song’s essence like a man in the dark, grasping at nothing. 

Most of the recordings are Buckley’s voice accompanied by solo acoustic guitar, and the most revelatory of them, the perennially unfinished title cut, isn’t a song at all, but an explanation by Buckley of how what he was about to play was “based on some music I heard in a dream.” 

The formative sketch of “Grace” shows the development of what would become the title song of his 1994 debut studio album.  He does a better than passable Bukka White on “Poor Boy Long Way from Home” and an uncanny Robert Plant on “Night Flight,” but only the subtle intimacy of “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Cryin’” shows the depth of promise that he wouldn’t live long enough to fulfill.  A vocalist of uncommon range — musically and emotionally — he was trying to find himself throughout his brief career. These are early, baby steps.