CULT RECORD:TIM BUCKLEY:"STARSAILOR"(1971)

Dead from a heroin and morphine overdose in 1975, Tim Buckley's 28 years were nonotheless packed with some extraordinary accomplishments. His influence on alternative music is rarely felt directly. Buckley was such a distinctive artist and singer that no one, save his biological son Jeff, could ever really sound like him. Yet underground experimentalists from Sun City Girls to Red House Painters are clearly in debt to Buckley for his fearless egoism and sense of musical daring. Starsailor released in 1971, gets so far inside Buckley's head it's no wonder that his last three sex drenched, white boy, funk/soul studio albums represent a collapse; he was wiped out. Buckley blithely ignores all laws of structure and pace; he trusts only his own intuition. "Song To The Siren" is the album's breathtaking bit of beauty; This Mortal Coil's 1985 cover version sparkled renewed interest in Buckley. But it's the title track that serves as Buckley's apotheosis, a wordless barrage of whoops, cries, cackles, croons, shouts, melismas, and moans that commingle into one of the most powerful demonstrations of emotional bloodletting ever recorded.

Posted in: Cult,Music,Singer-songwriter