Grace by Jeff Buckley

Personnel: Jeff Buckley (vocals, guitar, harmonium, organ, dulcimer, tabla); Gary Lucas, Michael Tighe (guitar); Loris Holland (organ); Matt Johnson (vibraphone, drums, percussion); Mick Grondahl (bass); Misha Masud (tabla). With GRACE, his first full-length statement as a bandleader, songwriter/guitarist Jeff Buckley sets out upon a road less travelled, avoiding the safe and predictable in favor of the ecstatic and the personal. Not that such obvious influences as the Beatles and Led Zeppelin have disappeared from this young talent's music. Buckley's voice is an exquisite, malleable instrument, and from his daring vaults into the upper registers to his long, enraptured middle-register ornaments and moans, he suggests the breakthroughs of a young Robert Plant or Van Morrison. Songs like "The Last Goodbye" (with its coy slide intro and ragaish string backgrounds) and "Lover, You Should've Come Over" (with its late Beatles harmonies and Edith Piaf vocal ornaments) are powerful evocations of failing relati... Minimize