Tim Buckley
Blue Afternoon

THE REVIEW

I've been in a slump for a while now. I can no longer write reviews. Not like before, at least. Before, I could whip one up in half an hour, now I spend hours writing four lines that I'm sure I'll discard. And so I put on Tim Buckley.

I suppose it's difficult to write a review about a Tim Buckley album. Because he, his voice speaks to your thoughts, and thoughts, emotions, are not easily defined, let alone expressible..."thought is like the ocean, you can't stop it, you can't fence it in," as Lucio Dalla would say.
But... but now, as I listen to the first notes of the magnificent Happy Time, I feel my mouth hint at a smile, without even knowing why. And I immediately look out the window, and immediately melancholy overwhelms me, because I realize I'm chasing sadness, and I feel alone, alone like a river, because the world is out there, and it can't understand you...

And he's there, speaking to me with his enchanting voice. His voice is on a journey, it's not yet experimental like in "Lorca," nor devastating like in "Starsailor"; but at the same time, it's different from "Happy Sad," because here we are accompanied by eight intimate compositions, where what matters most is the final whole. Tim delicately pilots his instrument, going up and down the scales, prodigiously modulating his vocal cords. And in the few places it can't reach, his usual companions, Carter Collins, Lee Underwood - who in Chase The Blues Away unleashes one of his best solos -, Jimmy Madison, never as evocative as in the measured beats of I Must Have Been Blind and The River, step in. Only towards the end, in Blue Melody and The Train, does Tim Buckley show us that his wild voice is still there, just waiting to navigate the stars. But now he is reflecting, it's a sad afternoon, too early to set sail.