Hosts: Neil & Chris
Duration: ~46 minutes
Release: 27 May 2024
In this episode Neil and Chris sink into Jeff Buckley's Grace, an album that refuses to sit neatly in any rack divider. For Chris it is one of the few CDs he kept when he sold almost everything to buy a guitar, a benchmark for how emotional and aspirational a record can be. For Neil it is almost a blank slate, a singer and album he somehow missed completely, which makes his first week with Grace a genuine voyage of discovery.
They talk through that initial disconnect, those early listens where the record feels like background soup, too quiet and too ephemeral to grab hold of. Then they describe the moment it clicks, the volume comes up, the headphones go on and the record stops being wallpaper and starts feeling like a room you step into. From there they explore how Buckley's voice, the band and Andy Wallace's production turn improvisatory ideas into songs that can still tear you apart.
The breakdown of Eternal Life and Last Goodbye shows how crucial the rhythm section is to making this album work. Neil latches onto those filthy bass lines and more traditional song structures, which give Buckley something solid to dance around with his four octave range. They contrast those rockier moments with the title track Grace, where the outro turns into breathtaking vocal gymnastics that most singers would not even attempt, and with headphone staples like Mojo Pin that drift into the room almost imperceptibly before blooming into something huge.
They spend time on Lilac Wine as well, isolating the quiet opening where you can hear every tiny movement in Buckley's voice and the lexicon reverb tail that makes it feel like he is alone on a tiny stage in front of you. Along the way they dig into the signal chain that creates that feel, from Neumann microphones and Fender amps, through a Neve console and Studer tape, to that then cutting edge Lexicon 480 unit that wrapped everything in a lush but tasteful halo.
Grace is one of those albums that critics were unsure about at first, then slowly pulled closer until it sat high on "greatest records" lists. Neil and Chris show why, arguing that it is less a genre piece and more a document of what happens when someone with outrageous vocal and musical ability treats the studio like an instrument. They unpack how later writers reframed the record, moving it from a hard to place curiosity to a touchstone for singers, songwriters and producers chasing genuine emotional impact.
By the end of the episode you hear two different relationships with the same record, one long standing and devotional, the other new, sceptical and then surprisingly won over once the volume is right and the time is taken. Perfect for: listeners who love headphone albums that reward close attention, fans of soaring, emotional vocals, and anyone curious how a single, singular record can move from cult favourite to canon without ever really fitting a simple genre tag.