BLUE AFTERNOON

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3.5 stars really!!!

Recorded after Lorca, but released before it, Blue Afternoon marks the debut on the Straight Record, a subsidiary label to Zappa's own label. The new label had indeed asked Tim to see if he had some more accessible songs so they could promote the album properly, something Tim would grudgingly do, going back into his music sheets and pulling some 8 songs that had been unused before. While this might be revealing of the average quality of the tracks on this album, he did pull out of his pocket a few beauties that would lighten up the record, but the mood was still very sombre and the line-up playing on this album is the last one for his "jazz group" line-up.

It's a little strange to hear a song called Happy Time (most likely a leftover from Goodbye & Hello) with such a melancholic tone both in the music (the same line-up as in Lorca, but wasn't given the space) and in voice (Tim uses the lower frequency octave of his voice, whereas when it was written, he would've sung at least a couple octave higher, thus giving a depressive feel to what should've been a happy tune. Was this part of Tim's self sabotaging? Difficult to say, but that opening track sets the tone for the whole album, starting with Chasing The Blues Away, which although beautiful, it does anything but chase it away. A little further away, we have the splendid The River (inspired by a Sam Cooke track), but the mood stays oppressively dark. The flipside is no different with the self-explanatory So Lonely and the very slow Café (yet superb, but best listened to with headphones) and the lengthy (the only track above 6 minutes) closing The Train, where Tim finally raises his voice, almost showing us the track was probably written during for Lorca or Happy Sad sessions, and it comes with a fairly dissonant middle section and a Tim-esque sessions of yodelling, yapping, yelling that brings us to what we (and Tim) want. The main difference between this depressive album and the awesome but gloomy Lorca is Tim's enthusiasm and the tracks' structures (time-wise and interplay-wise), where here everything seems voluntarily restrained and subdued, and in Lorca, every horses flying on freedom's wings.

Blue Afternoon is a bit of a lost album in Tim's early discography, one that couldn't choose its camp between commercial happy Tim and the more introspective jazz artiste he dearly wanted to be. Another down point is that this is the last of Tim's original jazz band, as for Starsailor, only guitarist Underwood and bassist Balkin remained. But this is another story

"Blue Afternoon" is the 4th full-length studio album by US experimental folk rock artist Tim Buckley. "Blue Afternoon" was recorded in a very busy four week period in 1969, where the very different sounding 5th studio album by Tim Buckley Lorca (1970) and some material that ended up on the 6th studio album "Starsailor (1970)", were also recorded. The album was released in the 24th of November 1969 through the Herb Cohen and Frank Zappa owned Straight Records label.

"Blue Afternoon" is considered Tim Buckley´s last folk rock album before he went into avant garde/experimental/jazzy territories. His last album "Happy Sad (1969)" already showed great changes to his sound with several experimental tracks and a bit unexpectedly "Blue Afternoon" is actually a much more straight folk rock album than it´s predecessor. Tim Buckley´s unique and emotional vocals are the center of attention as always though and the instrumentation is pre-dominantly acoustic as usual too. The real strength in the music is, in addition to the emotional vocal delivery, the strong melodies. But the clever instrumental performances are also very enjoyable. The most experimental track on the album is the closing track "Train". My favorites on the album are the dark and mellow "Chase the Blues Away", "River" and "Cafe".

The sound production is warm and organic. It´s like standing in the room with the musicians.

"Blue Afternoon" is a great album by Tim Buckley, full of warmth, longing and dark emotions. The fact that "Blue Afternoon", in addition to material enough for one album more, was recorded in just four weeks is also quite the achivement. A 3.5 - 4 star (75%) rating is deserved.

There is no doubt Tim Buckley's third album is wonderful and beautiful in many moments. The album is more folk and psych than prog, like the first part of the album. "Blue Afternoon", is a calm, mellow, gentle album, with a nice touch of autumn melancholy and lyrical profoundness. The first part of the album is beautiful, each song is memorable and touching, especially the opener "Happy Time" which has a melody that reminds me of "Song for The Siren" The second part isn't quite as beautiful; it's more reflexive, even more calm and generally slower. Consequently, the music has a lower tune in this second part. Anyway the album is excellent, highly recommended.