It's strange to think about what Jeff Buckley would be doing today, at the age of 43, had he not tried to go nightswimming in the Mississippi River at the age of 30. His lone "real" album, Grace, was an obsession of mine in the mid/late '90s, and I was recently listening to it for the first time in years.
I wasn't quite sure it was having the same effect on me as it once did, but when I heard the title track, I remembered why I was so smitten. The key asset of Jeff Buckley's music is his voice - he can hit the high notes, he's got a good Rock scream - but it's not difficult to imagine a parallel universe where this voice is part of a AOR or Pop juggernaut that would make music snobs like myself want to throw up. Thankfully, this is not the case, and the band that plays on Grace couldn't me more underrated (check out the drumming, for instance). One of the best debut albums of the last 20 years.
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