Jeff Buckley

when I listen to 'Grace', I can't help but feel haunted by Jeff Buckley's immense whisper of a voice; it is emotionally involving to the point of being distracting. When I listen to it I refrain from doing anything that requires a great deal of attention, because I'll simply drift into the melody and Buckley's croon.

but this is only now, over five years after I first purchased it. For a good part of these, I had to skip this album entirely when it came up, because, through none of the music's fault, I couldn't stand to listen to the first track, 'Mojo Pin'.

You see, the first time I cracked 'Grace' open and gave it a listen, I thought it was quite certainly some of the most beautiful music I'd ever heard. Buckley's singing is beyond the vast majority of singers' velour; vocally, he flies and wafts more niftly than a hummingbird. I, however, made a horrible freshman mistake in setting this CD in my stereo for it to play every morning as my alarm; I thought the sweet saddened tones on this album would soothe me out of sleep into a glorious awakening.

Of course, it is just a fact of modernity that an alarm will inevitably become just about the most obnoxious sound that one can hear. So using 'Grace' as my alarm made no difference in my mornings, and, in fact, ruined Buckley for me for a while.

But the point is, it is an album so beautiful that I would have liked to wake up every morning to the dreamy flux of emotion emanating from it; to feel the tragic fragility of grace permeate my ears. Buckley is a degree more sensitive to the precious and the magic in the world, more attuned to the wistfully fleeting; he manages to entrance with the dramatic beauty of his music.

just in case y'all didn't know.