Mystery White Boy

Mojo - "...A talent as large and far-reaching as his father's..." Q - 4 stars out of 5 - "...A very human album....the perfection of some of the performances is breathtaking....an increasingly apt [album] title..." CMJ - "...Captures Buckley's transcendent, emotionally charged performances with a level of intimacy that few live recordings offer..." Melody Maker - 3.5 stars out of 5 - "...There's no doubt he had many talents....Like his father before him, Jeff was capable of placing moments of beauty next to unfocused blather..." Rolling Stone - 3.5 stars out of 5 - "...Features Buckley's most intemperate guitar-rabid work: pushed-to-the-limit renditions of that album's peaks, unreleased raw originals and perversely divergent covers..." NME - "...A fantastic live document of the improvisatory and highly dramatic Jeff. Previously unrecorded tracks [and] incendiary performances by one of the greatest back-up bands..." NME - Ranked #25 in NME's "Top 50 Albums Of The Year". Entertainment Weekly - "...In full Led Zep bombast mode here, the late singer and his band rip through unreleased originals and noisy takes from Buckley's '94 album, GRACE....unfailingly inspirational....We're lucky these recordings exist..." - Rating: A- Spin - 8 out of 10 - "...Cobbles together an eclectic group of performances recorded from Hamburg to Seattle during 1995 and '96....Buckley could turn his shows into gender-bending cabarets and dramatic sacrilegious services..."

It's hard to judge Jeff Buckley's live collection Mystery White Boy: Live '95-'96 without thinking of what might have been, without realizing that he never fulfilled the extent of his potential. If that sounds harsh, it's not meant to be -- it's more of an acknowledgment of the tragedy of his premature death. After all, Mystery White Boy simply wouldn't exist if Buckley was alive when it was released in the spring of 2000. That wasn't the case with Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, the first posthumous release of his unreleased recordings. Those tapes were the foundation of what would have become his second album; the tapes that formed Mystery White Boy were DAT recordings of his supporting tour for Grace (which the album was named after), many of which weren't intended for release at any time. Once Buckley unexpectedly passed away, they became a core part of his legacy, particularly because his concerts were notoriously unpredictable and thrilling, sometimes transcendent (at least according to partisan fans). Mystery White Boy doesn't quite convey that sense of majesty, largely due to the uneven sound quality and the fact that it's a compilation, thereby lacking the ebb and flow of a real live show. Buckley's mother Mary Guibert claims in the liner notes that the compilation worked better than any individual concert, and she may well be right, since the album has a consistency that a full concert may not have. Still, it's hard not to slightly miss the dramatic rhythm of a real show. Even so, Mystery White Boy is a valuable document, since it does prove that Buckley could transcend time and place with a live show. That might only be of interest to hardcore fans, but they'll still thrill to this, all the same. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine|