The Best of Tim Buckley

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2007-08-09 rating:
Career-spanning collection from golden-age troubadour - but his best work is under-represented
With the success of everyone from James Yorkston to James Blunt, it's plain that the acoustic troubadour is back in style. That alone may be the reason for this new collection of remastered tracks. However, Buckley was a complex artist who was little understood in his own era, so perhaps the time is simply ripe for the kind of reappraisal which 2001's double-disc set Morning Glory failed to spark.

Unlike his celebrated but doomed son Jeff, Buckley Snr was a prolific artist who put out no less than nine albums in an eight-year career. The first two - 1966's Tim Buckley and 1967's Goodbye and Hello - presented him as a folk-rock artist. They showcased his rich, flexible Irish tenor in songs of love and disappointment, although as with much of Scott Walker's early solo work, the arrangements have dated badly. Seven out of the eighteen tracks collected here are from these two albums, with only one (Strange Feelin') from the third, jazz-inflected outing Happy Sad. That album's famous track Sing A Song For You is also here - but in an alternative take previously included on rarities album Works In Progress.
The somewhat lacklustre Blue Afternoon from 1969 is better represented, but arguably Buckley's masterpieces - the soaring avant-garde outings Lorca and Starsailor on which much of his restored reputation now rests - are represented by just one track apiece, I Had A Talk With My Woman and the sublime Song To The Siren. This is inexplicable, especially as the compilation peters out depressingly with four tracks from his last three R&B albums - deliberately commercial work which many of his fans prefer to forget.

Although the cover of Tom Waits' Martha is interesting, the title track from final album Look At The Fool which ends this collection sounds like an artist in agony. Here, Buckley seems to be snatching desperately at straws, such as the ill-digested influence of early Bowie. Buckley died the following year aged 28: a sad end to what might have been.

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review by: date: 2006-10-06 rating:
Not exactly a best of!
I was hoping this would do what it says on the tin, but it's not my idea of a Best of TB. No Buzzin'Fly, no Blue Melody, no Hong Kong Bar, no Sweet Surrender for a start, and it seems odd to prefer tracks off his pretty average final albums Sefronia and Look at the Fool over Starsailor. A weedy portrait of a major talent.


review by: Dr Simon to you date: 2006-10-05 rating:
Songs from the Magician who once was
This new single CD Rhino compilation of Tim Buckley's music is a beautiful testimony to his incomparable talents.
The remastered material featured here is excerpted from the nine studio albums issued before Buckley's death in 1975. Track 10 is, however, an alternate take already issued on posthumous CD releases.
These nine albums were originally issued on four labels: Elektra (4), Straight (2), Bizarre/Warner (1) Bros and Discreet/Bizarre (2) during the 1966-1974 period.

I have worshipped all aspects of Buckley's music (the singing, the compositions, the arrangements, the musicians' backing) since I bought his "Goodbye and Hello" Elektra LP in 1967. Contrary to some fans, I love (to varying degrees) all of the original Buckley albums (his last three LP's received a lot of, IMO, unfounded criticism from some quarters). To me, Buckley was an extraordinarily gifted singer-songwriter, one of my favourites indeed. The material gathered here ranks from good (and I mean: good!) to truly exceptional. .

Buckey was definitely a LP orientated recording artist. During the course of his career, his music kept evolving at a fast pace and in often wildly different directions. Therefore, any collection is always going to be the subject of some debate. But there is certainly not one track here that I wish Rhino had left out.

I will also add that, in 2001, Rhino issued a remastered, lavishly packaged, 2-CD, 33- track anthology under the title of "Morning Glory". Seven out of the eighteen titles featured on the single CD under review did NOT appear on the earlier set. Moreover, besides the alternate take mentioned above, this CD uses the original studio version of "I Had a Talk with My Woman" which appeared in a live version on the 2-CD set. The scope of this 2-CD set is, of course, broader. It is also more expensive.

Therefore, if you are relatively new to Buckley's oeuvre, and are interested in just the one CD, this compilation will offer you definitely more than a glimpse of the musical treasures he left behind. Prepare yourself for a sheer aural delight!

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