2003 - USA
Singer-Songwriter, Alternative Rock
“Only the fucking people who make this fucking business run my fucking infect life, my beauty, my soul, my love for life and songs and all of humankind. […] What will my beautiful Rebecca, intoxicated with her compassion and her wild unseeable flame, have to endure in this big bossman’s plantation ? If they touch her, I will kill them all.” Jeff Buckley wrote this note on the 15th of July 1993, four days before recording his first live session at Sin-é, a small New York café, a decision implemented by his label Columbia. In this note, we can feel how doubtful he feels about joining such a big label, about his music career and how his beloved Rebecca Moore will continue to live by his side in this troubled period. But on the 19th of July 1993, when he enters the café for the first time, starting a series of shows during the summer, just made of him and a guitar, the big business men behind their desks are swapped for the gentle sound of coffee cups. We are intimate.
No one else. No one else could have recorded this album. During 2 hours and 37 minutes, a very long runtime passing by like a dream. Songs from The Doors, Nirvana, Duane Eddy, Miles Davis, all of them could have existed here. As well as many others since Jeff Buckley can play everything he wants, as perfect as he can, on his magical guitar, with his unlimited vocal range. The most brilliant thing with Live at Sin-é is how well you feel the gargantuan amount of work that’s behind those songs, and at the same you experience it like a well crafted and perfectly fluid jam session from Bob Dylan to Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn, Billie Holiday to Edith Piaf and Led Zeppelin to Nina Simone. And every time, every single time, it feels like those songs were written by Buckley himself, amazingly fitting in with his original songs, which are now as important in the history of music as the others. This album is a simple man standing on a stage in front of a small audience, modestly turning himself into a myth.
The best way to experience this myth is to listen to these live recordings without a single pause. The most beautiful feeling is to seat among this small crowd not really knowing what’s happening in front of them, arriving and leaving, ordering their drinks, laughing at Buckley’s jokes, while we, today’s listeners, cry at the simple genius of an artist that continues to exist beyond his earthly time. Just like an open diary, his songs are here at their rawest, from one heavy emotion to the other, interspersed with light interludes. This is how we get one of the most moving moment of the album, Dink’s Song, followed by one of the funniest, when Buckley pretends he’s playing musical chairs for the arriving customers. Sometimes I think that Live at Sin-é is a more essential release than Grace because of how wide his talent, vocally (The Way Young Lovers Do) and musically (Unforgiven), is highlighted. One of the most genuine musical archive there is.
Later in the year, his relationship with Rebecca Moore continues to worsen, until they break up soon after this summer of 93. Moore is one of those people who inspired some of Jeff Buckley’s most famous songs, like Grace and Forget Her. On the 7th December, still in 1993, Buckley wrote “It’s a sad world. This innocent feeling inside carries such big sadness. I lost my love. She’s locked outside my heart and it doesn’t make sense ! I wish I could read my dreams and find some answers. Find some inner gift to point a way to change my heart. Something. Anything at all. I love my butterfly. Why aren’t we lovers anymore?” Live at Sin-é is everything in between those two notes, after the worries and before the ending, it’s the moment where his questions about love and his passion were unsure, but it’s also the moment when many of his emotions were the most visible. Hallelujah, Je n’en connais pas la fin, Sweet Thing, this is an album about love, in all its forms, where Buckley says thank you to his idols, old and new, immortal in his mind, ephemerous in his world. Shadows passing by, engraved in one of the most beautiful album of all.
No one else. No one else could have recorded this album. During 2 hours and 37 minutes, a very long runtime passing by like a dream. Songs from The Doors, Nirvana, Duane Eddy, Miles Davis, all of them could have existed here. As well as many others since Jeff Buckley can play everything he wants, as perfect as he can, on his magical guitar, with his unlimited vocal range. The most brilliant thing with Live at Sin-é is how well you feel the gargantuan amount of work that’s behind those songs, and at the same you experience it like a well crafted and perfectly fluid jam session from Bob Dylan to Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn, Billie Holiday to Edith Piaf and Led Zeppelin to Nina Simone. And every time, every single time, it feels like those songs were written by Buckley himself, amazingly fitting in with his original songs, which are now as important in the history of music as the others. This album is a simple man standing on a stage in front of a small audience, modestly turning himself into a myth.
The best way to experience this myth is to listen to these live recordings without a single pause. The most beautiful feeling is to seat among this small crowd not really knowing what’s happening in front of them, arriving and leaving, ordering their drinks, laughing at Buckley’s jokes, while we, today’s listeners, cry at the simple genius of an artist that continues to exist beyond his earthly time. Just like an open diary, his songs are here at their rawest, from one heavy emotion to the other, interspersed with light interludes. This is how we get one of the most moving moment of the album, Dink’s Song, followed by one of the funniest, when Buckley pretends he’s playing musical chairs for the arriving customers. Sometimes I think that Live at Sin-é is a more essential release than Grace because of how wide his talent, vocally (The Way Young Lovers Do) and musically (Unforgiven), is highlighted. One of the most genuine musical archive there is.
Later in the year, his relationship with Rebecca Moore continues to worsen, until they break up soon after this summer of 93. Moore is one of those people who inspired some of Jeff Buckley’s most famous songs, like Grace and Forget Her. On the 7th December, still in 1993, Buckley wrote “It’s a sad world. This innocent feeling inside carries such big sadness. I lost my love. She’s locked outside my heart and it doesn’t make sense ! I wish I could read my dreams and find some answers. Find some inner gift to point a way to change my heart. Something. Anything at all. I love my butterfly. Why aren’t we lovers anymore?” Live at Sin-é is everything in between those two notes, after the worries and before the ending, it’s the moment where his questions about love and his passion were unsure, but it’s also the moment when many of his emotions were the most visible. Hallelujah, Je n’en connais pas la fin, Sweet Thing, this is an album about love, in all its forms, where Buckley says thank you to his idols, old and new, immortal in his mind, ephemerous in his world. Shadows passing by, engraved in one of the most beautiful album of all.