osthumous albums of gifted musicians always tend to be tainted by the feeling that someone out there is making themselves a tidy amount of money out of the work of another. When one reads about the dreadful conditions Jeff Buckley was living in in the months before his untimely death there is a definite sense of injustice. However, before Songs To No One we have had (Sketches For) My Sweetheart The Drunk, Mystery Whiteboy and Live at L’Olympia to desensitise us from bitter feeling. Songs To No One is clearly the weakest of these 4 albums but stands close to Sketches as the most revealing.


Songs To No One chronicles what are supposedly the peaks of Jeff Buckley’s brief recording time in New York with former Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas. They had met after Jeff performed at a tribute show to his father in April 1991 with Lucas in attendance. Jeff joined Lucas’ revolving door membership group “Gods and Monsters”. The group provided Jeff with fun for a short time but, as the liner notes by David Browne (writer of the excellent Jeff and Tim Biography “Dream Brother), state, it was too confining for Jeff so early in his career and thus abruptly ended.


Compiled from a variety of gigs around New York and studio sessions at Lucas’s residence, the songwriting on offer is clearly embryonic, featuring a version of “Mojo Pin” (“This is about a dream I had” says Jeff as a way of introduction). Also included are two versions of the title track of this LP, featuring a harmonica solo in one, which thankfully did not make it to the final rendering.


Jeff’s interpretation of the Joe Hayes/Jack Rhodes penned masterpiece “Satisfied Mind”, which ended his funeral service, is the most affecting track on the disc, the understatement of simply man and guitar gets the best out of the minimal recording means. Mrs. Buckley’s choice of it for her son’s memorial is entirely vindicated.


Unfortunately, the majority of this album is exactly the sum of its parts. An inexperienced singer/song writer just beginning to find his feet and at the other end of the time-scale Gary Lucas, an undoubtedly talented guitarist but clearly past his most creative days. For all the bounce of songs like the title track and grungy pomp of “Cruel” this is barely a shadow of the ability that fuelled “Dream Brother” and “Lover, You Should Have Come Over”. The exclusion of demos for “Eternal Life” and “Last Goodbye” (at that time called “Unforgiven”) that we are told were around at the time of recording seems nonsensical when you consider that “Grace” is included twice as well as the indulgent “Hymne À L’Amour” which lasts over 10 minutes.


The title of the album tells you what you need to know. These recordings were never intended for official release. As a stand alone LP it would fail massively flat but as an insight into Jeff’s early career it does have sporadic moments of intrigue. The Jeff Buckley cash cow will undoubtedly be milked again in the not too distant future, hopefully for slightly more deserving reasons than this.