HAPPY SAD

On Happy Sad Tim Buckley's sonic universe expands remarkably, with jazz influences incorporated in order to offer an even spacier and more alien sound than his previous work. Conventional folk-rock is left behind as Buckley takes us through long, expansive compositions which seem to parallel Van Morrison's stream-of-consciousness space folk experiments on Astral Weeks. Buckley would venture into even stranger territory on later albums like Starsailor or the absolutely bizarre Lorca, but this is a good jumping-on point if you want to follow Buckley into these weird waters, since there's a certain warm charm to it that gets lost in his moments of more extreme experimentation.