Jeff Buckley
You & I
COLUMBIA/LEGACY
5/10
Given its title, intimacy is the intended promise from this unadorned eavesdropping on Jeff Buckley’s early development as a major-label star in the making. And that’s just how You & I feels: confidential and unguarded, with plenty of space for the listener to cozy up beside the late performer’s silvery, soaring voice.
In early 1993, Buckley ran through much of his live set list for Columbia Records’ brass to ingest. The ten cuts from that run-through that comprise You & I were discovered only recently in an archival quest for bonus tracks to blow up the twentieth anniversary edition of Grace, Buckley’s lone studio release.
Instead of becoming bonus material, these tracks were packaged on their own. Unfortunately, You & I is fighting a losing battle in its efforts to join the select lineup of essential recordings from Buckley, who drowned in the Mississippi River in 1997. Still, the record offers his definitive reading of Bob Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman” as a passion-filled powerhouse (a less focused performance is on the deluxe edition of Live at Sin-é), and a take of “I Know It’s Over,” alone and crying over violent guitar strums, brings an even greater urgency to The Smiths’ devastating classic. Unfortunately, it is this album’s only sparkling revelation.
The much-touted unreleased original tune “Dream of You and I” is less of a song and more of a somnambulant travelogue through Buckley’s creative process, and though the repeatability may be low, it is charming all the same.
Then there’s his bizarre romp through the traditional workman’s blues of “Poor Boy Long Way from Home,” with his pristine voice distorted into Southern swill, and a truly directionless “Night Flight” in which Buckley ditches his choir god’s voice for Robert Plant’s clarion calls.The results are halting and shrill.
Better though is a loose shuffle around the dance floor with “Everyday People,” Sly & the Family Stone’s funky cry for equality. The track is redemptive not only for underlining Buckley as a unity-minded artist, but as a pro busker of nearly any genre he wanted.
Ultimately, You & I comes off as uneven as any vaults-sweeping record would be, but if you think you didn’t need to hear this twenty-six-year-old white boy sing “Ooh, ooh, sha, sha,” think again and just listen in.
