(Columbia)
Herald rating: ***
Review: Russell Baillie
After Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk, this live collection is the second posthumous album to arrive in the wake of Buckley's 1997 death by drowning in the Mississippi River.
Its 12 tracks - locally available with a three-track bonus disc - were recorded during Buckley and
band's global excursions during 1995 and 1996 in the wake of debut album Grace, touring which included an Auckland performance at an underpopulated but severely enamoured St James Theatre in early 1996.
This reminds that while in his studio efforts everything was constructed around his wondrous voice, live he was a guitar-slinging frontman of an artful and muscular rock band (its members with Buckley's mother Mary Guibert selected the tracks here).
And he was a bit of a card, too, as shown by his amusing Edith Piaf impression during the intro to a Paris-recorded Last Goodbye. Or on his solo version of Gershwin tune The Man That Got Away, which provides an unlikely highlight here.
Still, these versions of Mojo Pin or Lilac Wine still capture That Voice, even if the live arrangements of the likes of Grace's title track sound positively hamfisted when compared with the ornate album versions.
Mix-wise it's not the greatest (them drums!) either. But if that stops it being a less than essential addition to Buckley's all-too-brief body of work, it's still an intriguing one.
