Customer Reviews

Morning Glory: The Tim Buckley Anthology

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Tim Buckley's output was little known during his tragically brief life, but since his death in 1975 more and more people are recognizing him as one of the most outstanding vocalists of the last fifty years. His incredible range was as powerful as any instrument allowed him to eschew large bands, making for intimate and moving songs and giving him the flexibility needed to make original contributions to music. Rhino's MORNING GLORY: THE TIM BUCKLEY ANTHOLOGY collects some of his best material, including songs from the now out-of-print albums BLUE AFTERNOON and the magisterial STARSAILOR.

Disc 1 covers Tim Buckley's first two releases, his eponymous debut and 1967's GOODBYE AND HELLO. These albums were in a folk vein, but songs such as the nightmarish "No Man Can Find the War" and the frenetic "Pleasant Street" are complex pieces that move beyond anything that had been offered before in American folk. The first songs show that his first album was somewhat overproduced, with Elektra giving him a string orchestra for no particular reason, but on the tracks that follow the production was ideal, with that amazing voice accompanied by just the right instruments in just the right quantities. The closing track is the live song of "Troubadour", recorded in London in 1968. Even if you have all of Tim Buckley's studio albums, this heartbreaking and tear-inducing song is enough to merit buying MORNING GLORY (or the live album DREAM LETTER, from which it was taken).

Disc 2 contains Buckley's work from the latter half of his career. More abstract music, highly influenced by free-form jazz, these songs were blasted by critics upon their release but are now recognized as Buckley's finest work. "Happy Time" rejects easy hooks in favour of solid composition. "I Must Have Been Blind", afterwards made popular in covers by This Mortal Coil and Brendan Perry, moves with a delicate magic. The peak of this disc is without a doubt two songs from STARSAILOR, Buckley's masterpiece and one of the most important releases of contemporary music. "Song to the Siren", whose cover by Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie of TMC in 1984 resurrected interest in Tim Buckley, is perhaps his finest vocal performance, with a vocal track of wails accompanying him in the background. On the chilling "Monterey" Buckley's voice becomes as abstract and cutting as the wild instruments which back it up. Three songs are featured from his controversial 1973 album GREETINGS FROM L.A., in which the jaded singer wrote songs of desperate love and frank sexuality. "Sweet Surrender" almost reaches the height of his STARSAILOR material with its astounding vocals, and while Buckley's voice usually overshadowed his band, the masochistic "Make It Right" features some incredible drumming.

Unfortunately, Rhino was prejudiced towards the folk portion of Buckley's career and I would have preferred more tracks from his free-form period. Considering that STARSAILOR is now out of print and almost impossible to find, it would have been nice if Rhino had put more tracks from that incredible album on this anthology. The liner notes, provided by some critic named Barry Alfonso, are enlightening, but give short shrift to Buckley's post-1972 output. These albums, in which Buckley decided to give the unsympathetic public what they wanted after the poor sales of STARSAILOR, are highly sexual and desperate, but they nonetheless feature incredible vocal performance. It's also a shame that "Dream Letter", a haunting meditation on his distant son Jeff Buckley, who in the 90's put out incredible material and died young like his father, wasn't included.

Tim Buckley was an incredible singer and songwriter, and his output went unnoticed and underappreciated for far too long. MORNING GLORY: A TIM BUCKLEY anthrology is a great way to experience his incredible music, and I'd recommend it to everyone.

Tim Buckley started out as a folk-rocker but ended up as a musical explorer whose sound would extend the boundaries of popular music and defy categorisation. The billowing beauty of his later work, on Starsailor in particular, would only begin to be appreciated after his death in 1975.

His first album Tim Buckley was released in October 1966 when he was only 19 years old. Buckley's passionate voice exquisitely wrapped itself around lyricist Larry Becket's romantic songs like Song Slowly Sung and the lovely Valentine Melody which is absent here.

During the hippy year of 1967 Buckley was doing the folk club circuit in New York City where he recorded his first masterpiece, the accessible Goodbye And Hello which was his breakthrough album and largest seller ever. Classic tracks included the impressive I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain, the moving Once I Was, omitted here, and of course the Dylan-influenced title track.

But instead of consolidating his success Buckley veered off into the most experimental of directions, rather too unusual for his 1960s folk audience to appreciate. Initially he moved into minimalism on the album Happy/Sad (1968), co-produced with ex-Loving Spoonful guitarist Zal Yanofsky. The wistful Blue Afternoon (1969) and Lorca (1970) are jazz-folk fusions.

The next album, Starsailor, was even weirder. It is a strange journey into the realms of avant-garde jazz where Buckley applies his voice as an instrument to spectacular effect. Scott Walker in his weirder moments comes to mind. But it did include two very accessible masterpieces: The poignant Moulin Rouge (sung partly in French) and the exquisite Song To The Siren, which was beautifully covered by This Mortal Coil in 1984.

Considered by many to be his opus magnum, the uncompromisingly erotic Greetings From LA (1973) was an enthusiastic embrace of all things funky, effusive and sensual. Move With Me deals with the wrath of a jealous husband, whilst Sweet Surrender is an explanation of his infidelity. There is great sadness in Hong Kong Bar, social commentary in Nighthawkin' (unfortunately not present on this compilation) and shades of sado-masochism in Make It Right, a song comparable in theme to Velvet Underground's Venus In Furs.

Greetings From LA was followed by the unremarkable Sefronia (1973) and Look At The Fool (1974), which proved to be his last album as he died on June 29, 1975 in Santa Monica, California of an overdose. Buckley left a memorable body of work that is being appreciated more and more with the passing time. Although not perfect (vide the omissions listed above) this compilation is a great introduction to the work of a unique musical genius. Like Nick Drake and Tim Hardin, Buckley's music has stood the test of time very well and his reputation continues to grow. I give the album only 4 stars because of the omissions.

First, almost no one is going to like everything that Tim Buckley did. That is not a reflection of his talent, but of the extraordinary diversity of his musical output. Tim Buckley was one of rock's greatest experimentalists, and embraced such a vast number of styles during his tragically short career, that very few will find all of his attempts congenial. This collection does a great job of collecting the high points from each period in his career. Many will prefer the earlier songs, where he appears more as a folk troubadour. Myself, I am more of a fan of the later, more challenging songs. Best of all, this album features both the original version of the amazing "Song to the Siren" off STAR SAILOR, as well as the rare acoustic version of the same song from the Monkees TV show.

Buckley possessed one of the truly great voices in the history of rock, with a range that was surpassed possibly only by Roy Orbison. He not only had a remarkable range, but also could change the timbre of his voice. One listening to the two versions of "Song to the Siren" noted above, if he or she didn't know that Buckley was singing both, might find it hard to believe that both were by the same person. He was always a tenor, but he seemed to be able to kick into a high tenor that sounded almost female at times. At times his voice was thin, at times almost like a woodwind instrument as he would hold out a note.

Buckley was also a gifted songwriter, as this album amply demonstrates. Given all this, one might be led to ask, why wasn't he bigger than he was? The answer primarily lies in his diversity. He did too many things, sang in too many styles, and as a result was never able to really nail down a target audience.

A great two discs, but I can't give it a straight up recommendation, just because, if you're not a huge fan of Tim Buckley after listening to these two discs, you'll feel like you wasted your money, and if you are a huge Tim Buckley fan after listening to these two discs, you'll only want to buy his original albums!
Still, it does have some great tracks which are not available on any other CD, or are from out of print albums which go for $90 used these days, (songs from Starsailor and Blue Afternoon, and the version of Song to the Siren performed live on The Monkees show, which is definitely a great addition). The only song I can complain about is "Goodbye and Hello"- maybe the only song on here I dislike- I listened to it once, but now, I press the skip button every time it starts. Makes me feel bad for people who own the vinyl version, who have to carefully lift up the needle every time it starts... They really should have put two shorter and better songs on instead.
Buying original Tim albums just MIGHT be a better purchase for some people, for several reasons. Like I already said, I wanted to buy all the albums after I heard this. Also, transitions between songs from different albums are not smooth, unlike compilation albums of musicians with more consistent styles. A lot of the tracks from different periods in his career sound awkward together, in my opinion. For this reason (and the inclusion of "goodbye and hello") I almost didn't give this five stars.
Also, it seems that most people prefer a particular period of Tim's career over others, and would probably be better off getting "Tim Buckley" if they like his early Elektra folk stylings, "Lorca" if they like his experimental stylings, etc.
I think anyone can appreciate his inconsistency more if they look at each album individually, not as a progression of his career. I think it's best just to look at each album as Tim doing whatever style he happened to be doing at the time, rather than hold each album up to the standards of a "Tim Buckley" album- whatever their definition of a Tim Buckley album may be. I think that being able to sing "she is the day of love" just as convincingly as he can sing "get on top of me woman" (why was that song not on here? as an incentive for you to buy "Greetings From LA," maybe) makes Tim even more impressive a singer than he would have been if he stuck with the same musical persona.
So, in conclusion- it's worth buying, especially for the out of print "Starsailor" and "Blue Afternoon" songs, but be prepared, it's a real tease, and as one reviewer said, it's not a "best of compilation," it's an introduction to and a sampler of Tim's music. It's function is to give you a reason to buy MORE of his albums, not less.

Let me be clear: for the quality of the material alone, I'd give this record 50 stars if I could. Buckely was a musical genius of the 1st order. He was totally unique, beyond genre, wildly inventive and a deeply gifted vocalist in the technical sense. Still , I can't help but feel this 2 disc set sort of short changes this great artist-- I mean, there are plenty of totally unworthy artists that have 3 or 4 disc sets. I feel, at the very least, Rhino could have done what they did with the great Love compilation "Lovestory"--- Included in its entirety the artist' s masterpiece-- in Love's case, "Forever Changes", In Tim's case, it should have been "Starsailor" (which remains frustratingly out of print). Gripes aside, this is a pretty listenable set. The first disc is Romantic (yes, with a capital "R") avant-folk-jazz. Even in his straight-up folkie phase, Tim was doing it differently and doing things no-one else was. Even his accessible work is uncompromising music. The meat of the collection is disc two, with excerpts from his later, more challenging work. Tim gets a rap as a "difficult" artist. It's not that his work is dissonant, discordant or abstract, it's just very intense. "Song to the siren" is probably his best work, and it's really almost hard to take--- it's so overwhelmingly beautiful, you might find your self exhausted by it. It is also impossible to avoid thinking about Tim's son, the great Jeff Buckely, when listening to this song. The classical imagery can sound like almost eerie premonition od Jeff's watery end in the Missisippi river 30 years *later*.... weird. It is just that intensity and oddness that often makes the set hard to listen to from start to finish is one sitting. It's emotionally draining, incredibly powerful stuff.

In what was possibly one of the most moving and dramatic endings of a character driven film, Jon Voight, portraying a disabled Vietnam vet, howls his outrage against the U.S. military machine in the Academy award-winning 1978 film "Coming Home". Against that heated torment, director Hal Ashby chose a song and a performer to weigh in on the final moments of the film's dramatic anti-war sentiments. The singer was Tim Buckley, the song was "Once I Was" and for years, it became the only opportunity mainstream audiences would ever hear of this impassioned, enigmatic yet profoundly gifted performer who had died so tragically at the age of 28 just three years before.

Tim Buckley, for years the very personification of musical obscurity, was a vocal acrobat whose five octave range could wail, scream and quietly seduce like no other. His nine year, nine album career transcended the categories of pop, folk, jazz and experimentation to both his artisitc credit and commercial death to such an extent that the fact he never scored a single hit in his career seems almost part of his pop culture identity.

Rhino Records has at last issued a retrospective of Buckley covering the performer at both his most accessible and enigmatic. A two CD set "Morning Glory: The Tim Buckley Anthology" traverses 34 tracks including the haunting "Once I Was", the beguiling "Morning Glory" and outstanding exerpts from Buckley's 1968 live British performances. A true gem of the collection is the unique "Song To The Siren" solo performance taken from U.S. television in 1967. Outstanding liner notes in booklet form place Buckley in his social/cultural context and attempt to demystify his obscured role in the rock 'n' roll pantheon analyzing songs, arrangments and the completley understandable reasons for the singer's commercial misfortunes.

What is gained over two CDs however, is a marvellous new understanding of Buckley's greatest achievement: his utter uniqueness among his musical peers and his utter refusal to be bullied by the music industry to produce what was not in his soul. Rhino Records has rescued a breath-taking talent and brought him into the twenty-first century for a new generation to enjoy. Let him never be lost again.

"Morning Glory" is a gem, the anthology that Tim has so richly deserved but not had until now. He was an amazing singer and songwriter who had tremendous potential (sadly squandered on his final three LPs--"Greetings from L.A." (1972) which was Tim's attempt at becoming the white Marvin Gaye, "Sefronia" (1973) which showed a scant few bright moments in an otherwise frustratingly lackluster album, and "Look at the Fool" (1974) which seemed to begin the process of recapturing Tim's creative powers).

I must admit, I missed "Love from Room 109," "Anonymous Proposition," "Driftin'," and the title cut from "Starsailor," not to mention the live in 1968 version of "Dolphins"; I am not terribly surprised that "Sefronia" and "Look at the Fool" are represented by only one track each. I noted that "Blue Afternoon" and "Starsailor" are both out of print (and consider myself lucky to have copies of both albums on CD as Rhino had reissued them in 1991-92); both are well-represented on this collection, which is beautifully remastered, and the liner notes extensive and complete. Kudos to Rhino for yet another job well done.

Tim was a great artist always looking for new challenges. This compilation will fill some gaps; it is quite complete since you will find here many different sides of the dreamer and ever-changing man: from Wings to Song to the siren. Some people will listen for the first time songs like The river or Monterey what it is a memorable experience. The selection is excellent(if you like music that comes directly from flesh, heart and soul, you will love it) Anyhow, as a fan, I miss titles like Driftin'(one of his best tunes), Cafe(deeply sad and lovely), Dolphins (a very good version of Fred Neil's) and, for instance, Down by the borderline(the final cut of one of his best albums: the out-of-print Starsailor) Tim was unique. Enjoy it!

Both the selection and liner notes exhibit the compilers' weird antipathy toward Buckley's last three studio albums. One of them, "Greetings from L.A.", is my choice for the greatest rock and roll album ever. I've been listening to it for 29 years now and it never grows stale. But this compilation gives it short shrift, including the only accoustic (i.e., least characteristic) song and the only slow song while omitting four of the greatest rock and roll songs ever recorded. Similarly, the only track included from the last album, "Look at the Fool", is the only ballad on the album. Apparently, the people who put this compilation together just don't like dance rhythms.

The compilation gives us overly-generous selections from Buckley's first two albums, which are apprentice work -- the first a collection of three-minute would-be pop songs saved by his fabulous voice, the second dragged down by the cringe-inducing lyrics of Buckley's high school buddy Larry Beckett. (In fairness, Beckett was just a precocious teenager when he wrote the lyrics -- that's the problem.)

The compilation redeems itself with a lot of songs from the "Happy Sad" and "Blue Afternoon" albums. We're thankfully saved from having to skip over much stuff from the unlistenable "Starsailor" album, but because the compilation is arranged chronologically you can hear how much damage the "Starsailor" period did to Buckley's voice. At age 27 he was already losing it, although Tim Buckley with a damaged voice was better than almost anyone else with an unimpaired voice.

Much has always been made of Buckley's verstatility and musical restlessness, but it's not often mentioned how loyal he was to his associates. He stuck with Lee Underwood for a long, long time, although Underwood's guitar playing never varied or evolved and his piano playing was amateurish at best. There's almost no variety in the instrumentation on the early and middle period albums featured on this compilation. So while Buckley himself -- both his voice and his sensibility -- kept changing, his band's sound didn't. It wasn't until his last three albums that he was backed up by instrumentalists capable of playing with his level of musical sophistication.

For all these cavils, however, the fact remains that Tim Buckley made great music and this compilation contains a lot of it. What makes the CD so good is Tim Buckley; what keeps it from being better is the compilers.

This double CD compilation tackles a difficult task, summarising an extraordinary career encompassing nine studio albums in just 2 CD's, this it comes tantalising close to accomplishing. As with most "Rhino" product, the packaging, liner notes, and sound quality are exemplary, in fact for fans its worth purchasing just for the latter which is most noticable for the 'Happy/Sad' tracks which on the original CD issue were particularly "hissy" but here are considerably clearer due to the superb Rhino remastering. The only criticism possible is due to the sometimes perplexing track selection which is (very) heavily weighted to his early career, the music of which could sometimes be annoyingly "twee" to modern ears and almost ignores his later, less critically lauded, career which still produced some very fine music. Simply put there are far to many tracks from the first two albums, where his talent was maturing, at the expense of essential later tracks. A particular culprit is the frankly dreadful "Goodbye and Hello" (almost nine minutes of it!) which show the singer's early Elizabethan affectations at their worst... its a track that the majority of listeners wouldn't want to hear more than once. This track comes at the expense of omitted superb tracks like "Driftin'" (from 'Lorca', already mentioned by an earlier reviewer) and "Love from Room 109" (perhaps his greatest long track) from his mid (best) period. The other other truly dire choice is the frankly cheesy "Moulin Rouge" from 'Starsailor', surely one of his worst ever songs.... 'Starsailor' is nobody's idea of easy listening but to include its poorest track just because it is conventionally melodic (in contrast to most of the rest of the album) was an unfortunate slip on the part of the compilers. Enough criticism though, this is still a superb compilation with many superb tracks, particularly from the difficult to get 'Blue Afternoon' (which for many vies with 'Happy/Sad' as his best overall album). It is also nice to see "Monterey" from 'Starsailor' included, perhaps the best track from that album just because it most successfully combines that record's avant-garde leanings with a more conventional (almost funky!) music form. The track selection from 'Greetings from L.A.' is spot-on picking the best 3 tracks (by miles) from that album. Unfortunately there are only one a-piece from each of his last two albums, good choices though they are, one more track from each would've been nice (perhaps "Because of you" or "The Dolphins" from 'Sefronia' and the title track from (the underrated) 'Look at the Fool'). These are minor quibbles though, overall I think Rhino have done a really fine job with maybe 20 minutes of subjectively mediocre music out of 150 minutes, that's pretty good percentages, therefore if you like any of Tim Buckley's stuff these CDs are a must.