BUCKLEY, JEFF – Grace

"Jeff Buckley sounds like a man who doesn’t yet know what he wants to be, and his uncertainty is the very thing that holds Grace, his debut album, together. It’s a ballsy kind of uncertainty, the kind you find in star high-school athletes who seem to have all the confidence in the world even as they’re straining to meet their own ever-increasing expectations. Buckley, with the help of his potent backing band, ends up pulling off some things no other young singer-songwriter-guitarist in his right mind would even try: Whatever possessed him to record the bleak, beautiful standard “Lilac Wine”? And the bigger question is, how in hell does he make it work?Buckley’s got huge ears and an even bigger record collection: He jumbles jazz, R&B, blues and rock references with such apparent nonchalance that he can seem like a showoff. His songs are anything but tossed off, and sometimes his meticulous arrangements sound too orchestrated, too ornate. But it may just be that movement and texture