Artist:     The Niro Featuring Gary Lucas The Complete Jeff Buckley & Gary Lucas Songbook

Album:     The Complete Jeff Buckley & Gary Lucas Songbook

Label:     Esordisco

Release Date:     11.8.2019

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These sessions have a dozen re-recorded tracks, two that appeared on the late Jeff Buckley’s 1994 Grace, five that appeared on 2002 Songs to No One, and five that have never been released. They are a product of Buckley’s sessions with guitarist and songwriter Gary Lucas that hearken back to 1991-92. The twelve songs, written for Gary’s band Gods and Monsters, featured Buckley as lead singer and began with Lucas’ solo guitar instrumentals, to which Buckley added a vocal melody and lyrics.

Of course, Buckley’s own solo career saw a meteoric rise, and little has been known about the Lucas-Buckley collaboration until now. Lucas’ band did make a live in appearance in Brooklyn in 1992 to a sold-out audience and much fanfare, but it was right after the concert that Buckley chose to go solo. From the twelve songs, Buckley late selected “Mojo Pin” and “Grace” to feature on his eponymous first album. Twenty-eight years later, The Niro and Gary Lucas recorded the original project—hence the word “complete” in the title.

Buckley had a distinctive, singular voice that would be almost impossible for anyone to replicate, but the leader of Niro, Davide Combusti, a the Rome-based artist, vocalist and songwriter, does bring a similar high register tonality and emotional sheen. This is the 25^th anniversary of Buckley’s iconic Grace, his only studio album and the one with his biggest song, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” in an album that has sold over two million copies. Besides Combusti and Lucas, the instrumentation features keys, additional guitars, cello, bass and drums . The combination of Lucas’ guitar, cello, and Combusti’s soaring vocals produce some interesting harmonics.

This band loves to rock more than anything else, and the sound alternates between dreamy soundscapes and hard driving guitar angst, sometimes sounding almost like an electric sitar. There’s a full hour of music beginning with the meandering nine-minute “No One must Find You Here” followed by the rocking “Story Without Words” and into the dreamy “In the Cantina”—such is the pattern. Lucas’ masterful acoustic picking on “Bluebird Blues” provides a nice break.

“Distortion,” as you’d expect, returns to a pounding, weird vibe before the ethereal “Mojo Pins,” a recognizable Buckley tune ensues. Another highlight, aside from the well-known “Grace,” that closes the album, is “Malign Fiesta (No Soul),” a punk-infused rock tune laden with piercing slide guitar runs.

It takes a while to settle into this one. It’s not immediately accessible or cohesive. Yet, as we think back, Buckley’s Grace started slowly too. Like that one, this one requires several listens before it clicks.

—Jim Hynes