and i searched behind your eyes for you
Oh god, I love Tim Buckley So Much.
This time around, it's entirely because of rhiannonhero ... :p Cos she posted Sinead O'Connor's cover of Song To The Siren which sent me to the original just to refresh my memory before I listened to Sinead. And suddenly I was shocked to remember that there are still Tim Buckley albums out there that I don't own. Talk about being propelled into action.
I was supposed to buy the new Midnight Juggernauts album, promised myself to buy Infected Mushroom, was toying with the idea of buying Nick Drake --- cos the novel I'm not supposed to be writing got me rediscovering the wonderful darkness of Joseph Arthur all over again and I remembered that every review of Joe always mentions Nick Drake which has made me curious about him for about a decade now --- and dubiously eyeing the new Kylie album.
As it is, I walked into JB Hi-Fi after work, examined the Kylie album before deciding I could delay that until I had heard a song in full. And I reached below it for an album with this gorgeous dusky pastel cover only to be thoroughly unnerved to find it was Bryter Layter by Nick Drake. *shudders* Just a few nights before, I'd downloaded a few Nick Drake songs and listened to them the very night before. I like one, Day Is Done, and am quite underwhelmed by the others. I don't mind the, as Redhead Dude put it, English country manor sound, but there's just something about his voice that I find a bit ... well, boring. Not like the beautiful warmth and melody of Elliott Smith or the quirky dichotomy of Syd Barrett or the inescapable personality of Alex Chilton. Maybe I just haven't found the right ones yet.
So I put that back and went to look at what JB had to offer in terms of Tim. And aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrgggggghhhh they had Sefronia! And Goodbye And Hello. I seriously dislike that album cover which is why I hadn't bought it to date. But omg, Sefronia! I hadn't seen that anywhere! And heh, he looks so wryly cartoonish and sexy on the cover.
I haven't been able to stop listening to them since. To the point where I'm anxious to get home just so I can have them pouring out of the stereo. Even though I have them on the iPod! They're so much more accessible than I had expected. Well, yeah, of course I'd think that after Starsailor and Happy/Sad. *lol* But what's delighting me so much is how often he's sliding into his delicious lower registers. I mean, I kinda fucking love Tim's impossibly soaring notes and even his screeches but christ, when he goes low, then I want to hug him and possibly do indecent things to the stereo. Rich and sinful is the unexpected timbre to his lower registers.
God, it's so difficult to talk about Tim's voice. Even as I'm typing this, he's swirling through this intricate vocal melody and he's doing it with such warmth and sexiness and personality, delighting both my emotions that wants sincerity and my intellect that's following the progression of the notes. Such a deft skilful vocalist, god damn. It defies full description.
I'm still in the process of distinguishing the songs but so far I'm a little unsettled by the similarity I'm hearing between the actual song Goodbye And Hello and Jeff's The Sky Is A Landfill. Both sound like they're not quite authentic, not written by our boys themselves. Both are social conscience political thingies, couched in kinda impenetrable visual metaphors. And both father and son sing with a particular strident note that rakes across my ear.
I am so so into Goodbye And Hello, so loving the delicate beauty of the melodies, and so overjoyed that songs I've only read about as being so beautiful are indeed making me indescribably happy. Phantasmagoria In Two ... *cries* ... it's such a heartbreaking sweet minstrel tune ... need I beg to you for one more day? The percussion is almost messy but oh god I don't know how but it works, maybe because the lead melody is so deceptively simple.
I'm pretty damned sure that Knight-Errant is quite a lewd little song. Every time he sings I love my lady's chamber, I find myself narrowly eyeing the stereo. I'm almost certain he's not talking about an actual room there. And yet it makes me laugh and wonder at the parallel of Jeff singing Corpus Christi Carol even though there's nothing remotely salacious and every bit haunting about that song. The similarity of medieval context just makes me grin.
Pleasant Street came out of nowhere for me, omg. And oh yes, the deep tones, the lovely enunciation of his 'd's and 't's. I love how it starts in this deceptively straightforward folksy way and then veers off into a kind of electric rock chaos, his voice sliding from deep detached warmth to that knife wail of snideness and hysteria. That quiet/loud dynamic totally gets me, well measured and so pleasing to the ear. Never mind that I quiver every time he does that echoic melodic turn on down. Gah, Timothy. You fucking gorgeous talented Aquarian man.
And yes, I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain totally shakes me, threatens to upset me every time. And yet I can't help but admire, in a sort of horrified way, the way and the fact that he sings and damn the reason why. When I think of Jeff listening to this song ... oh, I could slap you, Timothy Charles.
I'm still at the stage of absorbing the sound so I haven't yet fully untangled all the words so perhaps when that happens, I'll have a better appreciation of the meaning and intention. But argh! *facesmacks and then smacks Tim*
I've listened to Goodbye And Hello so relentlessly over the past few days that just a few hours ago I was totally startled to hear the opening chords of Dolphins and realise "Oh, this must be Sefronia ... oh yeah, I did buy another album, didn't I?" God, it's lovely. Too soon but ah yes.
Never mind that I still melt all over Sweet Surrender ... like how ... and that Greetings From LA still delights and shocks and intrigues me.
And it's gotten to the point of being totally unsurprised to figure out that Tim Buckley died of an accidental drug overdose thirty-four years and four days away from the day Michael Jackson died of an accidental drug overdose. And the same day one of my closest second cousins lost her mother, the first burial my generation has had to do. When I realised this, my one thought was "I really really hate the month of June."
I'm older than Tim Buckley. He died at the age of twenty-eight and left this mindboggling legacy. What the fuck have I done? What the fuck do I intend to do? Oh, I will.
I've got Lorca on order through Red Eye cos yep, I have definitely lost that CD and will never ever be able to forgive myself for the shame of that. You LOST a CD?! You LOST a Tim Buckley CD?! What are you, some sort of cretin? Jeez.
Yeah, well. I have no idea how that happened. I just know I have the case and there's no CD in it. *groans and buries head in hands* I don't lose books and I don't lose music. That's just unacceptable. Be like losing fingers, man.
I think there has to be a time for Tim. I can't always listen to him, it's been months since I last did. I'll go months without even considering him, not even aware that I have his albums. But then one day I'll turn and notice him and then I fall headlong into him and wonder how on earth I went through so many months without all this giddy stimulation, the endless fascination and intricacy of his sound.
And every time I fall into this rapture, I find myself being so damned inspired by the story of him. The story of his artistry, the sheer rebellion of his career. It's so incredibly brave and I wonder what it must have been like to be him, to hear these musical arrangements in his head. Did he know how weird they are or were they perfectly normal and acceptable to him? Did he think nothing of the way he reels his voice all over the place, the way he so effortlessly controls such wildly veering notes? Did he KNOW how daring he was?
can i be like that?
Because it never comes across on the albums. It's never pompous, never artificial. He's just doing what he wants, what comes naturally. That's what it feels like. Maybe that's the myth of Tim Buckley. Maybe that's just me. Perhaps there are people who listen to these same albums and roll their eyes, appalled and unable to believe the sheer ego and effrontery of this man that he could put these sounds to record and expect people to hand money over for them.
Well, hey, that's how I feel about Philip Glass. *lol* No, I don't. I think I'm pathetically ignorant and undeveloped for not being able to hear the appeal of Philip Glass. Hopefully, one day. *nods* Hopefully, it's a matter of evolution.
Me, I'm so in love with Tim Buckley right now it chokes me up with inarticulate happpiness.
This time around, it's entirely because of rhiannonhero ... :p Cos she posted Sinead O'Connor's cover of Song To The Siren which sent me to the original just to refresh my memory before I listened to Sinead. And suddenly I was shocked to remember that there are still Tim Buckley albums out there that I don't own. Talk about being propelled into action.
I was supposed to buy the new Midnight Juggernauts album, promised myself to buy Infected Mushroom, was toying with the idea of buying Nick Drake --- cos the novel I'm not supposed to be writing got me rediscovering the wonderful darkness of Joseph Arthur all over again and I remembered that every review of Joe always mentions Nick Drake which has made me curious about him for about a decade now --- and dubiously eyeing the new Kylie album.
As it is, I walked into JB Hi-Fi after work, examined the Kylie album before deciding I could delay that until I had heard a song in full. And I reached below it for an album with this gorgeous dusky pastel cover only to be thoroughly unnerved to find it was Bryter Layter by Nick Drake. *shudders* Just a few nights before, I'd downloaded a few Nick Drake songs and listened to them the very night before. I like one, Day Is Done, and am quite underwhelmed by the others. I don't mind the, as Redhead Dude put it, English country manor sound, but there's just something about his voice that I find a bit ... well, boring. Not like the beautiful warmth and melody of Elliott Smith or the quirky dichotomy of Syd Barrett or the inescapable personality of Alex Chilton. Maybe I just haven't found the right ones yet.
So I put that back and went to look at what JB had to offer in terms of Tim. And aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrgggggghhhh they had Sefronia! And Goodbye And Hello. I seriously dislike that album cover which is why I hadn't bought it to date. But omg, Sefronia! I hadn't seen that anywhere! And heh, he looks so wryly cartoonish and sexy on the cover.
I haven't been able to stop listening to them since. To the point where I'm anxious to get home just so I can have them pouring out of the stereo. Even though I have them on the iPod! They're so much more accessible than I had expected. Well, yeah, of course I'd think that after Starsailor and Happy/Sad. *lol* But what's delighting me so much is how often he's sliding into his delicious lower registers. I mean, I kinda fucking love Tim's impossibly soaring notes and even his screeches but christ, when he goes low, then I want to hug him and possibly do indecent things to the stereo. Rich and sinful is the unexpected timbre to his lower registers.
God, it's so difficult to talk about Tim's voice. Even as I'm typing this, he's swirling through this intricate vocal melody and he's doing it with such warmth and sexiness and personality, delighting both my emotions that wants sincerity and my intellect that's following the progression of the notes. Such a deft skilful vocalist, god damn. It defies full description.
I'm still in the process of distinguishing the songs but so far I'm a little unsettled by the similarity I'm hearing between the actual song Goodbye And Hello and Jeff's The Sky Is A Landfill. Both sound like they're not quite authentic, not written by our boys themselves. Both are social conscience political thingies, couched in kinda impenetrable visual metaphors. And both father and son sing with a particular strident note that rakes across my ear.
I am so so into Goodbye And Hello, so loving the delicate beauty of the melodies, and so overjoyed that songs I've only read about as being so beautiful are indeed making me indescribably happy. Phantasmagoria In Two ... *cries* ... it's such a heartbreaking sweet minstrel tune ... need I beg to you for one more day? The percussion is almost messy but oh god I don't know how but it works, maybe because the lead melody is so deceptively simple.
I'm pretty damned sure that Knight-Errant is quite a lewd little song. Every time he sings I love my lady's chamber, I find myself narrowly eyeing the stereo. I'm almost certain he's not talking about an actual room there. And yet it makes me laugh and wonder at the parallel of Jeff singing Corpus Christi Carol even though there's nothing remotely salacious and every bit haunting about that song. The similarity of medieval context just makes me grin.
Pleasant Street came out of nowhere for me, omg. And oh yes, the deep tones, the lovely enunciation of his 'd's and 't's. I love how it starts in this deceptively straightforward folksy way and then veers off into a kind of electric rock chaos, his voice sliding from deep detached warmth to that knife wail of snideness and hysteria. That quiet/loud dynamic totally gets me, well measured and so pleasing to the ear. Never mind that I quiver every time he does that echoic melodic turn on down. Gah, Timothy. You fucking gorgeous talented Aquarian man.
And yes, I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain totally shakes me, threatens to upset me every time. And yet I can't help but admire, in a sort of horrified way, the way and the fact that he sings and damn the reason why. When I think of Jeff listening to this song ... oh, I could slap you, Timothy Charles.
I'm still at the stage of absorbing the sound so I haven't yet fully untangled all the words so perhaps when that happens, I'll have a better appreciation of the meaning and intention. But argh! *facesmacks and then smacks Tim*
I've listened to Goodbye And Hello so relentlessly over the past few days that just a few hours ago I was totally startled to hear the opening chords of Dolphins and realise "Oh, this must be Sefronia ... oh yeah, I did buy another album, didn't I?" God, it's lovely. Too soon but ah yes.
Never mind that I still melt all over Sweet Surrender ... like how ... and that Greetings From LA still delights and shocks and intrigues me.
And it's gotten to the point of being totally unsurprised to figure out that Tim Buckley died of an accidental drug overdose thirty-four years and four days away from the day Michael Jackson died of an accidental drug overdose. And the same day one of my closest second cousins lost her mother, the first burial my generation has had to do. When I realised this, my one thought was "I really really hate the month of June."
I'm older than Tim Buckley. He died at the age of twenty-eight and left this mindboggling legacy. What the fuck have I done? What the fuck do I intend to do? Oh, I will.
I've got Lorca on order through Red Eye cos yep, I have definitely lost that CD and will never ever be able to forgive myself for the shame of that. You LOST a CD?! You LOST a Tim Buckley CD?! What are you, some sort of cretin? Jeez.
Yeah, well. I have no idea how that happened. I just know I have the case and there's no CD in it. *groans and buries head in hands* I don't lose books and I don't lose music. That's just unacceptable. Be like losing fingers, man.
I think there has to be a time for Tim. I can't always listen to him, it's been months since I last did. I'll go months without even considering him, not even aware that I have his albums. But then one day I'll turn and notice him and then I fall headlong into him and wonder how on earth I went through so many months without all this giddy stimulation, the endless fascination and intricacy of his sound.
And every time I fall into this rapture, I find myself being so damned inspired by the story of him. The story of his artistry, the sheer rebellion of his career. It's so incredibly brave and I wonder what it must have been like to be him, to hear these musical arrangements in his head. Did he know how weird they are or were they perfectly normal and acceptable to him? Did he think nothing of the way he reels his voice all over the place, the way he so effortlessly controls such wildly veering notes? Did he KNOW how daring he was?
can i be like that?
Because it never comes across on the albums. It's never pompous, never artificial. He's just doing what he wants, what comes naturally. That's what it feels like. Maybe that's the myth of Tim Buckley. Maybe that's just me. Perhaps there are people who listen to these same albums and roll their eyes, appalled and unable to believe the sheer ego and effrontery of this man that he could put these sounds to record and expect people to hand money over for them.
Well, hey, that's how I feel about Philip Glass. *lol* No, I don't. I think I'm pathetically ignorant and undeveloped for not being able to hear the appeal of Philip Glass. Hopefully, one day. *nods* Hopefully, it's a matter of evolution.
Me, I'm so in love with Tim Buckley right now it chokes me up with inarticulate happpiness.