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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hard to find nugget, January 20, 2006
Following the release of the classic album Happy Sad in 1969, Tim Buckley signed to Straight Records and recorded two albums of extraordinary quality the following year, Blue Afternoon, released in February 1970, and Starsailor, which came out in January 1971. 1970 also saw the release of a third album, the experimental Lorca, which contained five pieces recorded in November 1969 for Elektra, his former label. Blue Afternoon was the most accessible of the three though none was a commercial success.
Happy Sad had seen Tim Buckley throw off the shackles of the folk-rock tag and move for awhile into an area of free-form jazz-blues and avant garde exploration. One track in particular, Dream Letter, presages the thematic content and introspection of much of Blue Afternoon. This was his first self-produced album and used the same musicians as on Happy Sad, including Lee Underwood, who had played on all his records, on second guitar and piano, but adding drummer Jimmy Madison.
The whole album is led by Buckley's incredible performances in which his voice becomes an instrument, at one with his own twelve-string guitar accompaniment. The use of exclusively real instruments, subtly amplified to create a spacey feel, adds to the overall mood of languorous melancholy that pervades the record.
Surprisingly, given its overall homogeneity, the album consisted of a number of previously unfinished songs, leftovers from his first three, and, as with Happy Sad, were written by Tim Buckley alone. At the time of release he claimed to have written the songs for Marlene Dietrich, an aspiration he must have acknowledged to be doomed to failure, but which may have been an inspiration in their conception.
The album opens with Happy Time, which was simultaneously released as a single with the very beautiful and soulful I Must Have Been Blind on the B-side, reaches a peak with the magisterial Blue Melody and closes with an extended jazzy workout called The Train, perhaps most closely deriving from his work on Lorca, and demonstrating the state of constant flux in which he conducted his artistry. The Train led the way logically towards Starsailor, his next album, which largely abandoned set songs in favour of more extemporised pieces.
I hate to be elitist about this, since this important album, like Starsailor, has not been available on CD since its limited 1989 edition via Rhino, due to the collapse of Herb Cohen and Frank Zappa's Straight/Bizarre labels, and badly needs to be re-mastered and re-released. Although CD copies are hard to find, second-hand vinyl and cassette copies are still relatively easy to track down. He was a major artist, in the true sense of the word, and should be heard.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A SADLY LOST MASTERPIECE , July 27, 2005
This records seems to have always been destined to be a neglected orphan. At the time, Buckley recorded it quickly and more or less cast it aside in favor or more experimental work.
It now stands as one of two Buckly albumes out of print.
That's a shame for many reasons. The few recordings I find comparable to it for sheer emotional impact are legendary,
familiar to many, AND AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE.
There are a few CD's I would actually purchase at premium collector prices. Most of the time, I would suggest waiting
until somebody puts the item in print again. However, if you
have the good fortune to find a copy of this, buy it immediately.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Incredible Album - Try and get hold of a copy, January 24, 2005
This was Tim Buckley's forth studio album and certainly one of his finest(along with 1968's 'Happy sad' and the awesome 70's works 'Lorca' and 'Starsailor).
The album is similar in style to happy sad but the tracks are, for the most part more tightly structured, more focussed and the instrumentation is less sparse. This album was more of a 'consolidation' of the 'happy sad sound' rather than a giant conceptual leap forward, with many of the songs having been written prior to 1969. But there are some differences and some clues as to what was to come. For one Tim's vocal pitch is different to that of happy sad. On happy sad Tim still has that pure, unexplainable bell like clarity in the vocals, on Blue Afternoon the vocal sound is deeper, richer with Tim revelling in exploring the lower reaches of his impressive range, which he would later perfect on 1970's Lorca. Selecting highlights is very difficult because the material is uniformaly excellent but 'I must have been blind', 'The River' 'Cafe' 'Blue melody' and 'Chase the blues away'are amongst Tim's Finest composition's. The fact that this album along with 'starsailor' is out of print is an absolute disgrace to the Buckley legacy. Imagine, if you will not being able to get your hands on 'The times they are a-changin' or 'Blood on the tracks' there would be public uproar !!! These two albums are every bit as classic and worthy of being heard. Try and get hold of a copy because if your a Tim Buckley fan you need this masterpiece in your collection.
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