Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

Jeff Buckley was many things, but humble wasn't one of them. Grace is an audacious debut album, filled with sweeping choruses, bombastic arrangements, searching lyrics and, above all, the richly textured voice of Buckley himself, which resembled a cross between Robert Plant, Van Morrison, and his father Tim. And that's a fair starting point for his music: Grace sounds like a Led Zeppelin album written by an ambitious folkie with a fondness for lounge jazz. At his best — the soaring title track, "Last Goodbye," and the mournful "Lover, You Should've Come Over" — Buckley's grasp met his reach with startling results; at its worst, Grace is merely promising.

Jeff Bateman, Amazon.com

Resembling at times a soft-sung Robert Plant, Buckley was an intuitive vocalist capable of dizzying arabesques and choir-boy sweetness. He is joined here by a tight band for 10 tracks highlighting his stylistic range--Pearl Jam bluesy on "Eternal Life," impossibly serene on Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," art-school noisy on "So Real," Led Zep daring on "Mojo Pin." Unorthodox, this was the debut of '94.

Caitlin Moran, Amazon.co.uk

Here's what they say about Jeff Buckley: "He died too young". Here's why they say it: Grace is simply one of the most amazing things you can do with your ears and a little digitally-encoded disc. He inherited the voice of his father, the legendary Tim Buckley--seven octaves, each of them only just enough to cram his big feverish dreams into--but his music was all his own. Think Van Morrison's Astral Weeks on drugs--but then drugs could give some kind of comfort, and there's no comfort in Grace; just constant flux between crippling despair and an almost violent joy. When "Last Goodbye" unfolds it's third different middle-eight of Bollywood strings and Buckley's ecstatic scatting, it's hard to believe an ordinary human could have had a hand in something so extraordinary.

Personnel: Jeff Buckley (vocals, guitar, harmonium, organ, dulcimer, tabla); Gary Lucas, Michael Tighe (guitar); Loris Holland (organ); Matt Johnson (vibraphone, drums, percussion); Mick Grondahl (bass); Misha Masud (tabla).

With GRACE, his first full-length statement as a bandleader, songwriter-guitarist Jeff Buckley sets out upon a road less travelled, avoiding the safe and predictable in favor of the ecstatic and the personal.
Not that such obvious influences as the Beatles and Led Zeppelin have disappeared from this young talent's music. Buckley's voice is an exquisite, malleable instrument, and from his daring vaults into the upper registers to his long, enraptured middle-register ornaments and moans, he suggests the breakthroughs of a young Robert Plant or Van Morrison.
Songs like "The Last Goodbye" (with its coy slide intro and ragaish string backgrounds) and "Lover You Should've Come Over" (with its late Beatles harmonies and Edith Piaf vocal ornaments) are powerful evocations of failing relationships ("too young to hold on, and too old to just break free and run"). "Lilac Wine" and "Hallelujah" feature his glassy translucent guitar and poignant vocals in mystical, folkish settings, while "Dream Brother" achieves an almost Doors-like melancholy. Elsewhere, Buckley showcases his new band's power on "Mojo Pin" and "Eternal Life," which draw upon blues imagery and metaphors to create a subtle, hard-rocking atmosphere.

Douglas Wolk, CMJ New Music Report, issue 392, Aug 22, 1994

You can say this about Jeff Buckley: He's good, he knows he's good, and he's not thinking small. Grace, his first full-length album, is filled with back-to-back moments that lesser singers wouldn't try, because they'd know they couldn't get away with them-but Buckley does. This is singing in the tradition of classic blues (private pain made into passionate, public catharsis), art-song (careful lyrical interpretation, emotional power through amazing technique), even early Led Zeppelin (Buckley's vocal swoons, utter self-assuredness and habit of making grand gestures for the sheer sake of their grandness). What lets Buckley pull it off is the sympathetic band that backs him up. It's distinctive and unafraid of boldness and strangeness, but everything is still built around Buckley's voice, from the way the music of "Mojo Pin" stops to let him savor a few syllables to the quiet, satiny guitar that supports his hushed reading of Benjamin Britten's "Corpus Christi Carol." That, and the other two covers here are chosen wisely: The highlight of Grace is a take on "Hallelujah" that irrevocably steals it away from Leonard Cohen. Grace notes: the above, plus "Eternal Life" (dramatically fleshed out from its earlier appearance on Live At Sin-é), "Lilac Wine" and the eerie, hovering "Dream Brother."

Carey Head, Ink Blot Magazine

Yes, Grace is the definitive Jeff Buckley album. It all begins as "Mojo Pin" creeps into the air with swirling ambient guitars and Buckley's angelic, breathy vibrato seduces the listener and cascades over the odd time signature. Before the first minute of this album is over, you're enveloped in the most ethereal and achingly lovelorn album to come out in the past decade. "Grace" is one of the darker, moodier songs on the album. With Gary Lucas making a special appearance on guitar, this song marks Buckley's penchant for writing and singing about death and sorrow: "And the rain is falling/and I believe my time has come/it reminds me of the pain I might leave behind." The third song on the album,"Last Goodbye," was Buckley's only US single for Grace and even though it's the obligatory power love ballad on the album, it's damn good. Backed by acoustic guitars, Mike Johnson's solid drumming and some lush violins toward the end, it reminds you of that last time you left your lovers house knowing you could never go back no matter how badly you wanted to.

Every song on Grace touches you this way. The fourth song, "Lilac Wine," is a stunning achievement by Buckley as he plays troubadour and croons out an old James Shelton song. This is only upstaged by Buckley's emotionally jarring version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." As tender as the heart that broke to write this song, he confesses to us: "Well maybe there's a God above/but all I've ever learned from love-was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya." Jeff Buckley surprises you over and over again on this record. He can be as edgy and loud as old Zeppelin on "Eternal Life," and make you feel more emotionally naked than during your first sexual experience on "Lover, You Should've Come Over."

Jeff Buckley was a musical tidal wave. As a person and performer he left his fans feeling like his personal friends awash in romance and intrigue, a connection very few artists ever give to their audience. His extreme intensity and emotional sincerity make Grace what it is - a flourishing achievement in every conceivable way. Steal this album.

Ian Cranna, Q Magazine

Jeff Buckley is doubtless sick of the Son Of Tim tag (especially as dad was never around) but the inheritance of his father's vocal range and disregard for conventional form is inescapable. Thereafter, this startling record is strictly his own. His own songs of mystery and spirituality, where images of death and love, rain and fire, torment and longing fill the imagination, are complemented by sympathetic covers: Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, Benjamin Britten's Corpus Christi Carol and even the old Elkie Brooks hit, Lilac Wine. But it's the delivery that separates him from the crowd, ranging from delicate and dreamy to highly charged and nakedly emotional - swooping from choir boy to intense Led Zeppelin blues ballad. This is no pretty folk LP, it's a powerful album of unlocked emotions, poetry and drama, where ringing guitar and driving drums mix with swaying spartan tenderness and almost awkward rhythmic changes. Grace is variously fascinating, uneasy listening and hard work, but you could never confuse it with anything else.

Stephanie Zacharek, Rolling Stone, issue 694

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 mean so much to Buckley that he sometimes gets carried away. There are worse sins.

Buckley's curvy, intuitive vocals tell the main story: His inflections flicker with shadows of Billie Holiday and Chet Baker. Other influences are at work, too. Anxious to make his own mark, Buckley doesn't like to speak much about his father, the late singer/songwriter Tim Buckley. But genes tell a story: The elder Buckley's 1972 treasure Greetings From L.A. shows that father and son share a fondness for jazzy phrasing and wraith-like falsetto effects.

The young Buckley's vocals don't always stand up: He doesn't sound battered or desperate enough to carry off Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." But his ghostly "Lilac Wine," with its deep blush of a sound, practically adds years to his age. His voice seems weighted down with tears that just won't come out the normal way. "I made wine from the lilac tree, put my heart in its recipe," he sings, and his heart's in this recipe, too. Like any singer worth his salt, he knows that "Lilac Wine" just never comes out right without it.

© Frank Steven Groen