Lorca: Tim Buckley

By Unknown

Aptly named after the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, Lorca is one part of the pair of Tim Buckley albums which are generally considered to be the most challenging.

There's no getting away from it, this is a difficult album to get into, but isn't this what makes things interesting? This is the beginning of Tim Buckley's more experimental, avant-garde stage.

When playing this album for the first time after listening to Happy Sad and Blue Afternoon you would be forgiven for expecting to be greeted by gentle acoustic guitar and tinkling vibes. What you get is an opening of organ chords which could be mistaken for the soundtrack of an Amityville horror flick. Quite unsettling.

Lorca the title track is dark and really quite menacing, Tim using the deeper ranges of his voice as an instrument. Then, in the midst of all this, strange at first, is I had a talk with my woman. This track is a lovely bongo backed tune, which is more reminiscent of Blue Afternoon. Driftin' is a long slow melancholy number, which sees Tim really going off on one with the vocals toward the end.

Final track Nobody Walking, along with I had a talk with my woman is the most accessible track on the album. It's more straight forward than the earlier half of the album, being an upbeat blues/rock number.

This album began to lose Tim Buckley a lot of his following. Having said this is a hard album to get into, I would add that its also very worthwhile. This album demonstrates the very thing that makes Tim Buckley so exceptional, his ability to constantly re-invent musically, and his willingness to push boundaries without the fear losing commercial approval.