#0086: Tim Buckley - Goodbye And Hello [*]

I'm just gonna come right out and say it.  This guy's voice is just plain weird.  There's a vocal range in the opera world called Counter Tenor my dad told me about.  He says the voice gives him the willies cuz it doesn't sound like a man.  Now, the latent trans/homophobia aside, I can see his point.  It's like you can hear that a bloke's larynx is making that noise but it's too high a register so it sounds like it's been processed or sped up or something.

Tim Buckley is definitely on that spectrum but there's another texture to it too.  It's like he's closing this throat to do a silly voice like the nerdy ones in Monty Python sketches likes Bookshop.  

Outside the issues with his voice, there are two consistent qualities running through this.  One is the melodies all seem to be around the same pattern and the other is the repeated use of a loosely strung acoustic guitar that gradually becomes more and more chaotic as the song progresses.  

I Never Asked To Be Your Mount is a great example of this ruining an otherwise decent piece.  He could've been done at 4 minutes but he pushes it too far, creates this cacophony again and then starts taking risks with his vocal range that come off sounding like Bobcat Goldthwaite in a spin cycle.

Knight Errant is the only one I really liked from start to finish but then it's just under 2 minutes long and has a genuinely interesting progression.

All of these criticisms notwithstanding, it's just about bearable until the title track begins.  There's nothing particularly foreboding about it other than the tired old melody and the tired old descending bass but a glance at the i-Tunes window tells me this track is nearly 9 minutes long.  Every 2 or 3 minutes, there's a break in the repetitive dirge of a few bars of double tempo that promises relief but then pulls the rug out and returns to the land of gimme-the-scissors.  

Why does everybody think they're the ones who are gonna get it right?  They're gonna write the extended song that doesn't go anywhere or do anything that will blow people's minds.  The fuck they are.