Sunday Times (London) - 2001

Morning Glory - The Tim Buckley Anthology

by Stewart Lee

The late Tim Buckley is probably most familiar today as father of the late Jeff Buckley, whose acclaimed Grace album is incrementally acquiring modern-classic status. Jeff Buckley had a suspicious relationship with his wayward father's legacy, but his soaring vocals and stylistic flights of fancy were an inescapable genetic inheritance.

Morning Glory compiles Tim Buckley's nine studio albums, representing an evolution from sultry Greenwich Village folk/blues to the stratospheric improvisations of 1971's Starsailor, and then a bewildered backing away from this unrepeatable high point.

Though it ignores many of the superior song readings on Buckley's posthumously released live albums, this thorough collection closes with a much-bootlegged version of Song to the Siren, Buckley's crowning glory, from The Monkeys (sic) TV show, which entirely justifies his posthumous deification.