Tim Buckley

If there's anything even remotely comparable to the lofty, upright symphonies of Beethoven within the "vulgar" realm of pop-rock, it's undoubtedly the music of a man named Tim Buckley, the tragic and depressed angel, isolated and reclusive, simply abstract... "Happy Sad" is the ultimate expression of evocation exploding at the point where his mournful personality meets the perfect melodrama of his compositions. "Happy Sad" is the experience of a contradiction, a sublime yet ambiguous, impeccable work. It's a museum of sensations, an intuitive representation of neo-romanticism, a whirlwind of sinusoidal flows. "Happy Sad" is a record, and it's up to our capacity to understand -- and thus to live -- that we can uncover the wealth of everything else it holds within itself as a masterpiece.

Take "Dream Letter": you'll be thrown headlong into the marvelous desolation of a thought lived apart, into the very condition of being a weak, defenseless man -- a man, in other words... Listen to it when you feel like diving into self-absorption, or when you want to seal off some extraordinary moment: you'll realize the power of being absorbed into someone else's dream. "Happy Sad" is a realist yet dreamlike painting, a sonic transfiguration of some devilry by Fussli or a flash of light by Turner. And while "Buzzin' Fly" shows us how to sublimate the classic surface qualities of folk music, "Love From Room 109 At The Islander" carries us back onto a carpet of abstraction, of divine unions. Think of this song if you ever need to define the word "dilation"... And it's a stroke of genius, as well as a daring one, the way the pauses of "Love From Room 109 At The Islander" and "Dream Letter" are sped up through the emphasis of "Gypsy Woman", the summa of Buckley's entire career. A jumble of styles, sounds, teachings, techniques and genres, cradle of spine-tingling vocal modulations and absent-minded guitar flourishes. The instrumental interplay is deliciously incoherent. It's the primordial example of music becoming "epic" through vigorous rhythms and nagging beats; it's proof of just how impossible it is to confine inspiration within useless formulas. "Gypsy Woman" is also the flight of an immense performer toward the fragile, delicate poetry of chiaroscuro, the outpouring of vocal madness that "frees" the music, an elegy of oblivion.

The first hints of this had already appeared in the seven minutes of "Strange Feelin'", as unusual as it was bold a digression into the world of cool jazz, an obvious opener for a record that charts new territory for the artist, steeped in hypnotic "observations" and inner screams. The fitting farewell comes with "Sing A Song For You", a return to ecstatic tenderness. "Happy Sad" is, along with "Lorca", Tim Buckley's most visionary album, but here, unlike on the other, the contemplation of infinity is interrupted by primitive, chaotic dances that give shape to the Absolute. It's a constant coming and going of prayers and curses, of rushes and stillness, of fervent experimentation and excellent songwriting.

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27/10/2006