LORCA

Elektra's last album with Buckley certainly didn't change much in the stand-off between Tim and the label's staff. To add more insult, Tim had recorded an album of shorter more accessible song (something that Elektra was desperately trying to ask him) on another label (Straight Records) called Blue Afternoon, but that album got almost nowhere despite proper promotion (which irked Tim). So when the depressive Lorca was being recorded, most likely the Elektra staff decided this was the last of Buckley and put the album out to pasture some four months after the release of Blue Afternoon without the slightest promotion and it quickly went nowhere, the first Buckley album to miss the billboards. This really sombre album came out in a grey/silver colour artwork, although the back cover rectified that with some yellow sunrays over Tim's fuzzhead, most likely because this album was what Tim really wanted to do. Named after the Spanish poet, Lorca is a stunning album, very much in line with Happy Sad, but not yet announcing the astounding Starsailor album. Lorca is also the album where bassist Balkin starts gaining importance in Tim's musical adventures a bit at the expense of Underwood and the just-returning Beckett from the army, and since Tim took for inspiration Garcia-Lorca, Beckett was living in Oregon

Among some of the most stunning tracks on this album (only 6 tracks, like HS) is the 10-mins title track, with the sinister organ and electric piano opening, soon followed by Tim's almost looneybin- bound vocals and late Coltrane-esque soundscapes. The equally disturbing and slightly shorter Drifting is just as slow (almost as slow as a blues can get, without being a blues tune), with Tim holding some one note sustains, not particularly long sustains, but ones that servedthe track best, not overdoing it. The good thing about Buckley's exceptional vocal range is that Tim always avoided writing songs to feature his voice above all else, even if in every track his vocals are featured. The more upbeat Nobody Walking is a piano and congas-driven track, where Tim's voice escapes towards the upper octaves, differing a bit from the rest of the album. Clearly very few singers have used their voices like an independent instrument as Buckley had, at least in such uncommercial music.

Yes, Lorca is not to be listened to if you're feeling a little down, yet its gloomy doomy atmosphere has its eerie beauty, a fascinating glimpse of what a Hell melody can be. Because let's be realistic here: the normal fans are right.. Who in their normal state of mind would prefer to sing the Lorca album over the G&H album? But that's exactly the point.. Tim's wish to explore further down that bottomless shaft was pushed by his further estrangement of the world around him, pushing him ever further into heavy drug abuse and enticing him to write some more provoking and adventurous songs.

With Lorca selling only a quarter (or even a fifth) of HS or G&H, Tim's concerts of the time where not going down well either, the audience trying to find the old Tim and hating the yodelling, sometimes even going down to invectives being yelled between him and his audience. Needless to say that this "low" in Tim's career is now regarded as his "artistic high" some almost four decades later, although there are still many fans mourning the first Tim.

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