Some album releases are of their time, popular on release and soon forgotten. And some are for all time. Jeff Buckley’s 1994 album Grace is the second kind.

Five-time ARIA Award-winning singer and songwriter Katie Noonan was 17 when she heard the album. And it changed her life.

Noonan says: “Never had I heard a sound world like this, never had I heard a band that unique and never had I heard a voice that expressive, exploratory and exciting. The album is the biggest influence on my musical journey and was an enormous inspiration for my debut album, Polyserena, and my 29 subsequent studio albums.”

Noonan performed the album to five sold-out dates at the Sydney Festival in January and takes the concert around the country from September to November in a tour promoted by Frontier Touring. To celebrate the tour, The Music explores the enduring appeal of Grace.

THE SLOW BURN OF A CLASSIC ALBUM

Grace was the only album Buckley released during his lifetime. He was 30 when he drowned in the Mississippi River in 1997, as he prepared to record a second album. In the years since his death, the album’s reputation as one of the greatest releases of the ’90s and one of the greatest debut albums in the history of rock just keeps growing.

There is something about the music’s combination of vulnerability and electric intensity that grabs people and never lets them go. That title, Grace, captures the essence of the album too, where each listener can divine their own meaning about the music inside.

Yet early views were lukewarm in the US, where on release, the album peaked at No. 149.  But some people were listening, intently.

Especially in Australia and France, the two markets where Buckley found a big audience in his lifetime. Word on the street grew thanks to his unforgettable performances on a short tour of pub and theatre shows in Victoria and New South Wales in 1995. The album went to No. 9 in Australia, and Buckley returned in February the next year to play bigger venues, including Brisbane’s Festival Hall, the Palais in Melbourne and three nights at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre, to the kind of rapturous reception that the music demanded, deserved.

In 1996, Noonan and her brother Tyrone saw Buckley perform in Tweed Heads, setting them on the path to form their band george, which introduced Katie’s richly expressive voice to a national audience.

The deep connections that Australian audiences have with the album were clear in the response to those five shows at the Sydney Festival.

A review for Theatre Travels said: “Like Buckley, she’s a phenomenally acrobatic vocalist, but it never feels like the point is to show off; rather, the vocal gymnastics are a conduit for what is essentially an hour of unadulterated feeling”.

DRAWING FROM A DEEP WELL

Like so much music with timeless appeal, there is a breadth of influences on Grace that lay the foundation. As well as the striking variety in the original material, the album contains a version of classical composer Benjamin Britten’s Corpus Christi Carol. For many listeners, the album was their first exposure to Leonard Cohen’s 1984 song Hallelujah. And Lilac Wine is a cover of a song written for the 1950 musical Dance Me A Song, later recorded by Nina Simone, a singer whom Jeff worshipped.

These were not the kind of influences that appeared in many hit records in 1994, at the height of grunge and Britpop, and they were certainly not what many record companies were chasing, seeking the next big thing. Buckley was not the next anything. He wasn’t tied to genre or the whims of fashion. There were multitudes in there.

Buckley was as good a listener as he was a performer, as he told me in an interview in 1996: “I listened to a lot of music when I was growing up and I never forgot any of it. My stepfather was a mechanic and a record junkie, and every week or two he would come along with a stack. Now I’ve got that, too. I remember him having Pink Floyd, The Firesign Theatre, Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell.

“I never had any singing lessons, although you can’t help but learn. The teacher, for me, is hard experience. The different covers I do are just a lot of my faves. That comes from a time when the singer just had songs in the repertoire – it didn’t matter where it came from. Judy Garland, Ray Charles, Billie Holiday – they all did that.”

Buckley was drawing from a deep well of song, but there is more that goes into making an album for the ages than having good taste.

The listener is aware of that every time they take in those multitudes on Grace. Opening track Mojo Pin whispers, then explodes with Led Zeppelin-esque ferocity. Lover, You Should Have Come Over starts with the kind of elegy you might hear in church before revealing a melody so strong that it feels like it must have always been around.

The structure is multi-layered, working like the movements in a classical composition rather than conventional verses and choruses. Eternal Life thunders with metallic low-tuned guitars and a punky energy. Hallelujah is just the voice and finger-picked electric guitar, for seven minutes. It doesn’t need anything else.

Jeff barely knew his birth father, singer and songwriter Tim Buckley. Like his son, he was a mercurial singer and artist, releasing nine albums before he died of a heroin overdose in 1975, at 28. Jeff played in bands in his 20s but felt he needed a clean slate when he moved to New York in 1991. The slate, it turned out, was not that easy to clean.

Jeff had no desire to build a career on the reputation of the parent. But it bothered him that he didn’t go to his father’s funeral, so when producer Hal Willner invited him to take part in a Tim Buckley tribute show, out of respect for Tim’s achievements, he agreed to appear.

Also taking part was guitarist and songwriter Gary Lucas, who told me in an interview in 2015: “Jeff approached me backstage and I was bowled over; he had such charisma and such a powerful presence. And his enthusiasm was contagious.”

They met at Lucas’s apartment the next day to rehearse for the show. One of the songs was Tim’s I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain, written about his infant son and his mother. “When I heard what Jeff was capable of, it was jaw-dropping,’’ Lucas recalled. “I said to him, ‘Jeff, you are a star.’” Jeff wasn’t so sure about that.

That week, Lucas finished two instrumental pieces and showed them to the singer. Those songs became Mojo Pin and Grace. “He just knew what to do and where to place his voice,’’ Lucas recalled. “I could hand him these very dense instrumentals and he would elevate them to something that was beyond our individual efforts.’’

It usually takes a village to make a great record, but this was a small village, with the drums of Matt Johnson, bass by Mick Grondhal, guitar from Lucas on his co-writes, and Buckley playing most of the rest, including dulcimer, organ, harmonium and guitar. It’s not often remarked on, but Buckley was a superb guitarist too. 

Forget Her is one of the greatest closing tracks in rock music history, vocal clear as a bell, raw emotions spilling as if ripped from the chest. The music has been finding listeners ever since, from the musicians like Katie Noonan who took such inspiration from it, to the millions who would buy the album after Buckley’s death.

Grace is true soul music. And that is a precious gift.

For Noonan, seeing Buckley perform live remains one of the pivotal experiences of her life.

“It honestly was a transcendental experience and one of the greatest concerts I will ever see,” Katie says. “His integrity, sound and achingly honest lyrics have inspired me so deeply, I am honoured to present this body of work with some of my favourite musicians and pay homage to a once-in-a-lifetime artist.”

The general sale for Katie Noonan’s ‘Jeff Buckley’s Grace Tour’ begins on Monday, 26 May, at 12 pm local time. You can find more ticketing information on the Frontier Touring website.