You and I

You and I lacks the depths and textures of Grace--the intoxicating communion with other musicians, the wild strangeness of his own nascent songwriting and the assuredness that came with locating his place in music. Yet, even without all that, Buckley’s raw talent alone remains an astonishing thing.

Like a good deal of Hendrix’s posthumous material, whether you dig this or not depends largely upon your expectations. [No. 129, p.54]

There’s a tremendous amount of preserved intimacy on these unearthed first studio recordings.

Thankfully You and I is no barrel-scraping shakedown. It deserves to be heard. There may be no staggering surprises but it offers a chance to see a rare bird learning to fly. A memory worth holding on to.

Occasionally, there's a slight surprise--Buckley attempts Bukka White's Delta stomp on a slippery, slurred version of "Poor Boy Long Way from Home" -- but usually, You & I feels of piece with the rest of his early work.

It's covers that make the bulk of the songs, and some are more successful than others. [Apr 2016, p.90]

Whether it was classic rock or the blues, Buckley’s covers were never simply exercises in imitation, always revealing a part of him, but it’s his original material, too little of which is found here, that truly provides a glimpse into his soul.

A good 80% of You and I, the latest album of the lot, consists of covers, many already released in some format.... The new material includes a version of "Grace" that is basically a fully formed demo, while "Dream of You and I" is barely even that; the title is literal, Buckley thinking aloud about a dream he had about a band’s "space jam," which inspired him to write what’d eventually become "You and I."

You and I is more a raw sketch than a fully formed portrait of a 26-year-old artist still coming to terms with what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it.

It’s upon closer inspection that You And I starts to lose some of its luster. To start with, some of these songs have appeared in various forms across his live catalog.

There is a very good reason this has sat in a vault for 23 years: it fails to capture Buckley’s magic as well as the Live at Sin-é EP, which would be his debut release later in 1993.

Putting to the test the number of posthumous albums that one died-too-soon musician can bear comes You & I, the fifth collection of tracks.... It is painful, not least because these are unpolished demos and covers on which Buckley’s voice is tart enough to make your face pucker.

Worth a listen, but not game-changing. [Apr 2016, p.103]