Jeff Buckley

Jeff Buckley sounds like a man who doesn't yet know what he wants to be, and his
uncertainty is the very thing that holds Grace, his debut album, together. It's a ballsy kind
of uncertainty, the kind you find in star high-school athletes who seem to have all the
confidence in the world even as they're straining to meet their own ever-increasing
expectations. Buckley, with the help of his potent backing band, ends up pullin... More >

Although Tim's vocal traces are in his genes as surely as John's are in Julian's, it's wrong to peg him as the unwelcome ghost of his overwrought dad. Young Jeff is a syncretic ass, beholden to Zeppelin and Nina Simone and Chris Whitley and the Cocteau Twins and his mama--your mama too if you don't watch out. "Sensitivity isn't being wimpy," he avers. "It's about being so painfully aware that a flea landing on a dog is like a sonic boom." So let us pray the force of hype blows him all the way to Uranus. (Grade: C)