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20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Somebody Please Re-Issue, March 19, 2005
Although it sometimes seems that there are more albums re-issued on CDs than ever could have been available on vinyl in the first place, there are a few notable albums for which no CD version is available. The recent overhaul of the Neil Young catalogue righted a few wrongs, but key albums by Albert Ayler, Alice Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Terry Riley and Toru Takemitsu remain undigitised, not to mention a hole slew of Motown albums. I particularly mourn the absence of Annette Peacock's I'm The One and Tim Buckley's albums Blue Afternoon and Starsailor.
However, Starsailor (and Blue Afternoon) had come out in America on Rhino in 1989 but had quickly disappeared in some kind of legal wrangle involving Frank Zappa's Straight/Bizarre labels, for which the album had originally been recorded in 1970.
At its centre lies the starkly brilliant Song To The Siren, best known in its wonderful incarnation by This Mortal Coil, whose watery evocation of the tragic tidal pull of the sirens chillingly prefigures the premature death by drowning of his son Jeff Buckley in Memphis's Mississippi River. Elsewhere Tim's inspired vocal heights are matched by his own 12-sring accompaniment; the extraordinary, sympathetically fractured guitar and elemental keyboards of Lee Underwood; the deathless imploding bass of John Balkin; the Miles-inspired wind instruments of Buzz and Bunk Gardner and Maury Baker's traps and tympani. At times light and celebratory, and at other times harrowing and deeply primal these are songs that find unique territory to stake out and claim.
If the previous album, Lorca, sounds as if it is out on the edge looking for a foothold, on this album, that foothold has been found, and the ideas fully realised
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
buckley's greatest work, September 13, 2006
Tim Buckley travelled along a lot of musical paths, and some of these travels resulted in glorious records. "Happy/sad" is the album I love best, but "Starsailor", while more difficult to get into, is very likely the artistical high point of his career.
I should mention that I'm not totally convinced of the contributions of Lee Underwood to Buckley's records: his shadow looms heavily over a lot of Buckley's work and as he's not the genius Buckley was, his presence sometimes is a bit much, and this holds true for "Starsailor" as well. On the other hand, all other contributors to this album deserve a lot of praise for outstanding work.
I find side one (with songs like Come here woman and Moulin Rouge) the weaker of the two, but side two can't be faulted. Suberbly imaginative and experimental songs flow in a well chosen order, leaving the listener completely stunned.
Most famous of course is "Song to the Siren" which doesn't need any introduction. Nevertheless, it's not the greatest song on the record. It's "Starsailor" itself. What an amazing piece of experimental work it is! The words of a great poem ("I am a bee out in the fields of winter ....") are twisted and turned in a swirl of Buckley voices, giving the song an otherworldly atmosphere. I feel that there are some ways out of the stalemate of the "pop/rock-format" which has been milked totally dry and one of them is signposted by this Tim Buckley song.
A lot of people reviewing this album seem to focus on songs like "Song to the Siren". I'm telling you that the real treasure lies in the song that gives the album its name.
Whenever this album is available again snap it up like lightning, because this is one of the truly great modern records.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must-have for all music lovers, October 10, 2004
I had the pleasure of hearing this album for the first time at the tender age of 14 (I am 23 now) at which time I was totally floored and blown away (I still have the same reaction to it when i listen to it now). Starsailor is in a totally different solar system than "Goodbye & Hello", "Happy/Sad", etc. This album is basically a free-form jazz album with Tim pouring his heart and soul and giving everything he's got into his vocals. I've never heard and will never again hear anything even close to what lies on this album. His vocal acrobatics will make your jaw drop each and every time you hear them. If you consider yourself a music lover, you MUST have this album in your collection. It's a shame that this and "Blue Afternoon" are out-of-print and damn near impossible to find. I searched for "Starsailor" in pretty much every record store in the NYC/Long Island area for about 4 years and came up empty handed. I was only able to get this album on CD (I have it on Vinyl) by the gift of Napster (pre-Metallica). Until it is re-released on CD, I recommend obtaining this album by any means necessary.
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