by Peter Moore

Number Seven – Jeff Buckley: Hallelujah

Over some of the most memorable performances, singles and albums, hangs a faint air of tragedy. If art is about exploring boundaries, then we are most fascinated by those who stray closest to the edge. Listening to recordings Jimi Hendrix in 1970, Kurt Cobain in 1994, John Lennon in 1980 or Elliott Smith in 2003, you are accompanied by an ethereal sense of fatalism that no producer alive could ever reproduce.

Jeff Buckley was another that was destined to never grow old. It wasn’t drugs, depression, alcohol or crazed fans that did for him, but the sinisterly titled Wolf River in Tennessee. Son of folk singer songwriter Tim Buckley (who himself died of a heroin overdose at 28), hereditary expectations of success greeted the release of his first album, Grace, in 1994.

Upon the cover of Grace, Buckley was pictured as a young Elvis, clutching a classic microphone confidently in his left hand: his eyes closed and his head tilted downwards. It sets the tone for a record, which, mixed up with notions of iconography and socio-religious imagery, is well worthy of a PhD thesis in itself. Of its more easily digestible components, however, we have a cover of the Leonard Cohen song Hallelujah.

Whilst most of the Western world appears to have given up on Sunday as a day of rest, if not religious observance, I thought it would be a good idea to nominate Buckley as today’s Vibe Box entry. Young, talented and having made an auspicious beginning to his career, the listener can’t deny the poignancy of Hallelujah, which sounds a little like a solemn prayer from an artist edging ever closer towards his impending fate.