Monday, July 5, 2010

Tim Buckley - Starsailor (1970)


I know an album will become one of my favourites when I'm always in the mood to listen to it soon after discovering it. This is the case with Tim Buckley's Starsailor. From looking at the album cover, you'd expect a pretty laid-back, feel-good folk album from the 70s. Looks, however, can be deceiving.

From the first few seconds of the album you know it's going to be weird. Tim has a very unique voice that can sound haunting or batshit insane, but always beautiful. Songs like "Monterey" and "Jungle Fire" revolve around repeating guitar riffs mixed with frantic, jazz-like drumming. The title track is probably the weirdest thing here, a primarily vocal piece that sounds like something Can would do. The record's most famous song is "Song to the Siren" which you might recognize since it's been covered by many artists including This Mortal Coil and John Frusciante.

While more avant-garde than most singer/songwriter fare, Starsailor is an album that instantly grabbed me despite being much different than I expected. I still haven't heard Jeff Buckley's Grace yet, but when I do it will have this album by his dad to live up to.

1 comment:

  1. You really, really, REALLY need to listen to Grace. One of the greatest, if not the greatest, albums of all time.

    ReplyDelete