Tim Buckley: Deluxe Edition by Tim Buckley – Album Review

by Matt Callard

This audacious 1966 debut is often overlooked amongst Buckley’s sprawling, erratic but frequently brilliant eight studio album back catalogue; but it’s a gem.

Archetypal folk-rock before anyone even knew the term. The album is, in fact, a fascinating curtain-up for a mercurial new talent.

Only 19, slightly hesitant and not yet the fully-formed jazz-blues-rock Starsailor he’d become.

“All underpinned by that supernatural five-octave voice”

But he rarely wrote with such simple beauty again. Indeed he’d come to despise pop formula, which makes the innocent charm of ‘Song for Janie’ and ‘It Happens Every Time’ all the more touching.

Even so, ‘Wings’ and ‘Song of the Magician’ are nailed-down classics, all underpinned, of course, by that unique, supernatural five-octave voice.
4/5