So Real: Songs From Jeff Buckley

Because Jeff Buckley died after having only released one official studio album -- and a fantastic one at that -- fans and friends were unfortunately left to wonder what could have been instead of being able to see it first hand. Fortunately, Buckley had other recorded evidence of his immense talent besides the ten songs on Grace. He was a live performer as much, if not more, as he was a studio musician, and his Monday-night residence at New York's now-defunct Sin-é in the early '90s lent itself to an EP and an extended two-CD set, and other bits of shows were captured on the various other releases that peppered record shelves after the singer's untimely departure. The closest thing we got to a second album was 1998's Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, which, as the title indicates, was not necessarily a complete work, though most of the songs in themselves are finished-sounding and exciting enough to be interesting. What this means, of course, is that there's more than enough material to compile a "greatest-hits" collection, which is, in essence, what the Mary Guibert- (Buckley's mother) and Tom Burleigh-compiled So Real: Songs from Jeff Buckley is. [&] This is Buckley at his strongest and most affecting, and while Grace itself probably acts as the best introduction to the late musician, So Real: Songs from Jeff Buckley, still offers a good, honest portrayal of everything he was and all that he had. - All Music Guide