ARTIST: VA
TITLE: Dream Brother The Songs Of Tim And Jeff Buckley
LABEL: Full Time Hobby
GENRE: Indie
BITRATE: 178kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 57min total
RELEASE DATE: 2005-10-03
RIP DATE: 2005-09-22
Track List
----------
01. The Magic Numbers - Sing A 3:26
Song For You
02. Micah P. Hinson - Yard Of 2:58
Blonde Girls
03. Sufjan Stevens - She Is 2:22
04. King Creosote - Grace 5:34
05. The Earlies - I Must Have Been 5:19
Blind
06. Bitmap - Dream Brother 4:52
07. Engineers - Song To The Siren 4:32
08. Adem - Mojo Pin 5:05
09. Tunng - No Man Can Find The 5:03
War
10. Stephen Fretwell - Morning 3:41
Theft
11. Kathryn Williams - Buzzin' Fly 4:07
12. Matthew Herbert And Dani 4:48
Siciliano - Everybody Here
Wants You
13. Clayhill - The River 5:52
Release Notes:
It's not often you get a compilation album that opens with an exclusive track
from one of the most talked about bands of the moment (The Magic Numbers). It's
even rarer that you have an album of exclusively recorded tracks from the likes
of Sufjan Stevens, The Earlies, Kathryn Williams, Micah P Hinson, Adem, and
Matthew Herbert. But then when you realise these are cover versions of some of
the best songs written by Tim and Jeff Buckley it feels like Christmas and your
birthday all at once.
Tribute albums are supposed to be easy, undemanding - recess time for musicians.
The formula, set in stone years ago, amounts to this: Select a revered icon,
preferably cult; gather together singers and bands who have nothing but the
highest regard for said icon; have the upstarts record faithful,
don't-mess-with-genius covers of random songs from the subject's back catalogue.
Presto - done. No wonder so many of these compilations take up so much space in
record shops - and no wonder most of them are pointlessly redundant or, at
times, just plain lazy.
Dream Brother, thankfully, is the exception to that unadventurous rule. Tim
Buckley and his late son Jeff are now the stuff of rock mythology: masters of
the octave-leaping voice, the almost uncategorizable blend of music, and the
intense, sensitive-soul gaze. The debate over how much this father had in common
with the son he left and barely knew will always rage, starting with their
similarly untimely deaths (Tim at age 28, from a heroin-alcohol overdose in
1975; Jeff at age 30, of an accidental drowning in 1997). But there's no denying
the musical bond they shared: their dogged, relentless quest for artistic
transcendence, their lack of interest in making anything easy on themselves or
their audiences.
In that regard, Dream Brother is a model tribute. It's clear that the British
and American bands and singer-songwriters who've contributed to this unique,
joint salute to the Buckleys love their music, but they're happy (not sad) to
shake things up as much as they can. Even loyal fans of either man (who include
the likes of Rufus Wainwright, Starsailor, Elvis Costello, Badly Drawn Boy, and
Norah Jones, among many) may have trouble recognizing some of their favorite
songs here. Sufjan Stevens' take on Tim's chaste She Is fulfills the madrigal
potential of the original; Matthew Herbert completely dismantles Jeff's swampy
song of devotion, Everybody Here Wants You, while the folk-tronica duo Tunng do
the same with an eerie, junkyard-dog reworking of Tim and lyricist Larry
Beckett's Vietnam-era commentary No Man Can Find the War. In the hands of
Engineers, Song to the Siren is now a sad march to the sea, less about agonizing
about fate than about giving in. Interpretations of Jeff's Mojo Pin and Grace,
by King Creosote and Adem, respectively, treat the originals like well-worn folk
ballads, bringing out unheard nuances.
In the way it honors the heritage of the Buckleys while seriously screwing with
it, this album is a testament to the legacy Tim and Jeff left in their wake.
Wherever they are, it would be nice to imagine the Buckleys listening to this
collection, wondering why certain songs were chosen and others omitted, why
certain tunes were rearranged certain waysùand reveling in the volatility of it
all. They wouldn't have had it any other way.