Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk

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Performer: Jeff Buckley
Distributor: Dark Peak

Notes: SKETCHES FOR MY SWEETHEART THE DRUNK is a posthumous release of the material Jeff Buckley was working on before his death in 1997. Disc One includes the studio sessions for what would have been his second album, produced by Tom Verlaine. Disc Two includes Buckley's 4-track home recordings of works-in-progress, plus a live recording from the studio of WFMU. The CD-Extra version of SKETCHES FOR MY SWEETHEART THE DRUNK contains all the tracks on the original album along with a collage of photos, artwork, and lyrical excerpts and clippings from Jeff's notebooks. Personnel: Jeff Buckley (vocals, guitar); Michael Tighe (guitar); Mick Grondahl (bass); Parker Kindred, Eric Eidel (drums). Recorded at 135 West 26th Street Studio, New York, New York on February 5, 1997; live on "The Music Faucet," WFMU East Orange, New Jersey on October 11, 1992 and in Memphis, Tennessee in 1997. Includes liner notes by Bill Flanagan. "Everybody Here Wants You" was nominated for the 1999 Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. We'll never know for sure what artistic heights Jeff Buckley might have gone on to reach, since he was taken from us so obscenely early, with only time enough to complete one album and begin work on a second. With the help of SKETCHES, though, we can make some educated guesses. This double-disc, lovingly assembled by Buckley's friends, colleagues and family, gathers together both his studio efforts and home 4-track demos for the album he was trying to complete up until his tragic drowning. The studio sessions, produced by Tom Verlaine, find Buckley downplaying his phenomenal vocal abilities somewhat, in favor of focusing on the songs, from the Zeppelinisms of "The Sky Is A Landfill" to the undoubtedly Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan-influenced "New Year's Prayer" and the beautiful, ethereal "You & I." The home demos show Buckley's more experimental, playful side, an aspect of his music presumably encouraged by his pals/heroes The Grifters, whose lo-fi masterpieces inspired Buckley to work in the same studio in Memphis. The closing "Satisfied Mind," from an earlier live radio broadcast, is a touching elegy to an artistic flame that was extinguished far too soon.

Entertainment Weekly (5/29/98, p.74) - "...As with GRACE, SKETCHES is a testament to Buckley's role as lifelong student of rock history....[it's full of] the adventurousness and life-affirming qualities of Buckley's music, which is as much a part of his legacy as this incomplete, yet affecting, farewell." - Rating: A-

Though Jeff Buckley was adamant about not being compared to his father Tim, his voice and free-floating, improvisatory folk/rock/jazz style bore inescapable echoes of genetic heritage. The Michael Jordan of singers, he had a voice that could soar or sting at will, and his untimely drowning in 1997 squelched one of the most promising careers of the decade.

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