With crackling canon fire and a strong tenor voice that professes grace, intensity, and honesty in “No Man can Find the War,” listeners commence their journey to 1967 via Tim Buckley’s Goodbye and Hello.
A follow-up to his debut, self-titled album, Goodbye and Hello is an assertion that Buckley is not only a writer and vocalist that can hold more than his fair share of creative water, but is also able to navigate through and across the spectral palette of music. So diverse and profound are the ten tracks that comprise the album, that listeners are not only treated to a sampling of Buckley’s wares, but to a snapshot of the artistic evolution and discovery to follow in his last eight years of life. As the Beatles had just released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a nineteen-year old, curly-haired troubadour took his voice, creativity, and twelve-string guitar into the Elektra recording sessions, and what followed, was absolutely mystifying.
With much of the material on Goodbye and Hello co-written by Buckley and friend/poet, Larry Beckett, “No Man Can Find the War” is a three-minute introduction to the voice, guitar, sound, and lyrical integrity that follows throughout the album; Buckley’s voice juxtaposes qualities that are powerful, sweet, accusatory, and endearing. At first listen, the track may set a traditional rock tone for the tracks to follow, but upon experiencing “Carnival Song” and later on, “Knight Errant,” these thoughts are quickly extinguished. With a tightly-grooved band in tow on both “Pleasant Street” and “I Never Asked to Be Your Mountain,” Buckley’s voice escalates not only in intensity, but in range as well – his falsetto (as well as his low range) is astonishing. With the musical camaraderie of bandmates Lee Underwood (lead guitar) and Carter C.C. Collins (congas and percussion), Buckley is able to paint a wall of sound that is both intense and tender; the haunting tones that emerge from “Hallucinations” will drive chills up the spine as listeners continually spin the track around for another go – Buckley’s vocal intimacy, and twelve-string, acrobatic, driving fingerpicking are stellar.
Perhaps the strongest track on Goodbye and Hello, “Once I Was” checks in at the sixth slot. Featured in the 1969 film Changes, “Once I Was” allows listeners a further peek into Buckley’s intimate, sensitive delivery of lyrical imagery; amidst tracks that feature busier, full-band arrangements that drive forward with rhythmic progression, “Once I Was” breathes, floating along until his final, sustained syllable. “Phantasmagoria In Two,” the epic, nearly nine-minute title track “Goodbye and Hello,” and Buckley’s final, gorgeous feature atop a vocal choir, “Morning Glory,” all evoke a shimmering quality that points not only to his vocal acumen, but to his twelve-string guitar ability – his sound is like no other.
Unlike the albums of his contemporaries and musical descendants, Goodbye and Hello is one that makes listeners yearn for a second immediate listening; it is rich, it leaves questions, it leaves Buckley’s sonic mark on ones ears. It is no wonder as to why the late Nick Drake would come to appreciate and show his Tim Buckley influence through his own music. This album, as is the case with many that would follow until his untimely death at age twenty eight, is a work of art; if the first sampling does not catch listeners, the second will – if the second does not, the third will.
Matt Jaworski – Muzikreviews.com Staff
July 22, 2009