A Review of Jeff Buckleys Grace

Grace Vinyl Photographed by Michael Tringale, Original Photograph by Merri Cyr

Grace, an album written by Jeff Buckley and produced by Andy Wallace, was the only studio album release from Buckley, which debuted in the summer of 1994. Jeff Buckley was an American singer-songwriter most popularly known for his cover of "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen. Eventually, sometime after his tragic passing in 1997, Jeff Buckley became more widely known for his debut album Grace. According to Forbes “Buckley was relatively unknown outside of the downtown New York City scene where he first cut his teeth as a professional musician. Grace was not an immediate commercial hit upon its initial release, as it peaked at only 149 on the Billboard charts. Sadly, it turned out to be the only record released during Buckley's lifetime”. Although Grace did not generate an immediate splash, it became a very respected, influential, and significant album of the mid-’90s.

Grace features eleven full-length songs with no interludes or filler tracks. The album pulls influences from alternative and indie rock. Grace features moody acoustic and electric guitar, rock/jazz drums, church organs/keys, strings, and very personal, emotional, and beautiful vocals delivered by Jeff Buckley. The production all over this album is breathtaking, most notably on “Lover, You Should've Come Over” Jeff Buckley plays a moody electric and acoustic guitar accompanied by organs, heavy drums, and falsettos from Buckley, making for a beautiful moment on the record. Grace offers many memorable moments because of the songwriting and production. An example of a memorable moment on the album is during the track “Eternal Life” in the bridge and the last verse, the song drives to an end by use of a groovy bass line, an alt-rock chord progression, heavy drums, strings, and loud Buckley vocals as opposed to the dynamic vocals listeners hear on the previous track “Corpus Christi Carol”. I love that the production and songwriting on Grace allow each song to have time to shine on the album by arranging songs in a sonically contrasting order. One thing that surprised me is that According to Song Key “8 songs are major (out of 10)”, not including “Forget Her” which is in the key of a minor. The tonality of songs surprised me because the songs written on Grace seem like they would revolve around a minor tonal center because of how melancholy the songs on this album come across on the surface level. If anything, Grace displays Jeff Buckley's effectiveness in delivering emotional and visual songs that revolve around major and minor keys. Overall, the production on this album is distinctive. The album has climaxes and resolutions and offers something new when looking at each track. Andy Wallace and Jeff Buckley do a great job making the album palatable and not overproduced. As a listener, this album sounds live, colorful, and long enough. I treasure how lengthy the songs are as they allow Buckley to experiment more within a 6-minute timeframe and because we do not have other originals recorded from him. Even with these lengthier songs, the album remains under an hour long from start to finish. The songs also fit within the context of the other songs and play smoothly all the way through.

The melodies written by Jeff Buckley on Grace are particularly memorable by themselves. However, the harmonies on this album are next level. One of my favorite uses of harmonies from this album is on the track “Dream Brother” where Buckley is singing this emotional melody and has these airy vocals in the back that create melodic layers to the vocal. The song's production includes smooth drum fills, silky electric guitar, and an involved bassline, making one of the most beautiful moments on the album. Harmonies are used effectively throughout the album but predominantly showcase their effect on the chorus of “Grace” and make the track stand out from the rest. The lyrical content sung on Grace is emotional, reflective, and story-driven, so many of the rhyme schemes Jeff Buckley uses on the album are imperfect rhymes/slant rhymes. This use of rhyming works in his favor because it gives the listener the illusion that he is perfectly rhyming, although he is writing with words that he can pronounce to sound like they rhyme and writing what makes sense for the story of the song. This technique is why his songs come across as so emotional because the lyrics are deep and meaningful, and he uses imperfect/slant rhymes to make them more memorable. According to Genius, an example of Buckley using this technique is in “Last Goodbye" when he sings “This is our last goodbye, I hate to feel the love between us die".

The subject matter of Grace is about life, the trials and tribulations of love, and everything in between. Although many of the songs have major and minor qualities, as previously mentioned, the lyrical content of the songs occupying Grace is about real-life feelings and emotions we feel as humans. Specific tracks dive more in-depth into a particular feeling like “Lover, You Should've Come Over” Buckley talks about being too naive and ignorant to love someone at the time and the thought that they could've been the one is tearing them up from the inside. According to Pop Matters, a young Buckley prompted to talk about his debut album stated in an interview in the 2004 documentary Amazing Grace “Grace is what matters in anything—especially life, especially growth, tragedy, pain, love, death. That’s a quality that I admire very greatly. It keeps you from reaching out for the gun too quickly. It keeps you from destroying things too foolishly. It sort of keeps you alive”. The songs communicate throughout Grace perfectly and hit so hard emotionally that it does not surprise me that Jeff Buckley was very in touch with his emotions when writing this album. Instead of Grace being a person like most people assume by the title. Grace is about life, living life, and living through human experiences like Jeff Buckley talks about, and that the experiences we go through although they may be horrible, teach us lessons, and we can find Elegance and beauty within them and not always look from a pessimistic state of mind and instead try to find Grace.