Sing A Song For You - A Tribute To Tim Buckley

The late Tim Buckley, father of the less talented Jeff, was a sixties singer-songwriter whose extraordinary vocal range gave him one of the most lyrical voices of his generation.

This double-CD by a variety of generally B-list alt-rockers gallantly falls somewhat short of their hero’s achievements. Simon Raymonde’s and Anneli Drecker’s stab at the oft-covered ‘Morning Glory’ is passable, but evokes little of the impassioned innocence of the original. Geneva’s ‘Pleasant Street’ profitably stretches Buckley’s version to nearly double its length. Mark Lanagan’s ‘Cafe’ owes more to Leonard Cohen than to our Tim’s melancholic blueprint, while Tram manage to capture some of the naked poetry of ‘Once I Was’.

Neil Halstead’s ‘Phantasmagoria In Two’ is delicate and ‘Song To The Siren’ in the hands of The Czars has an unsettling, haunting atmosphere that actually adds to one’s understanding of the song. Mojave 3 drop their Dylanisms to do splendid justice to ‘Love From 109 At The Islander’. Other tributes come from Shelleyan Orphan, Brendan Perry and Cousteau.

All in all, this is not the travesty similar tributes have turned out to be, and it will certainly serve a useful purpose if it makes the Britney generation more aware of Buckley’s impressive and neglected body of work.