There’s not very much I can say that would express the true exuberance that came about in my life when I discovered Jeff Buckley. It was more than just his voice, which was a creation unlike anything I’d ever experienced at that point. It was more than just his guitar prowess, which stands the test of time as one of the most mind blowing. It wasn’t even his lyricism, which is laced with such poetry that I almost couldn’t believe there actually existed a human on this earth capable of such intrinsic beauty. No. What made me fall in love with him, and continues to send me into to throes of lovesick reverie, was the manner with which he carried the music. He breathed it, inhaled it into his body and exhaled in a sigh as powerful as a tribal yell on a mountain peak.
His third single from his only full-length release Grace is just as poetic and full of vocal elation. Its construction is simple, making way for the heartache and horror that ran through his lyrics. The video is typical 90s fare, if anything from the 90s could be described as “typical”.
It was riddled with symbolism (the monkeys who attack him and steal his one mode of transportation, only to be seen running through the streets on all fours and signing to each other… perhaps a symbol of the isolation of man, his legs literally being the only thing taking him away from the silence pushing through his existence. Even his disrobing at the end of the song holds the image of his escaping the confines that saw him lose sight of what brought him to where he is). It was also shot with an 8mm-esque feel that brought me closer to the man himself.
The director knew exactly how to capture Buckley’s energy, sparing us the exorbitant brightness of psychedelic colours and giving us an experience that is as emotional as the lyrics themselves.
