Tim Buckley - Morning Glory: The Tim Buckley Anthology (2CD) (2001)

F. Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives, but Tim Buckley wouldn't listen. Morning Glory brings together the two extraordinary, albeit all-too-brief, incarnations of Buckley's musical career: the pure-voiced '60s troubadour who gave us stunningly beautiful albums like Goodbye & Hello and the howling early-'70s experimentalist seemingly hell-bent on ravaging his past romanticism. For those put off by the tortured, erratic brilliance that came to the fore on the difficult Starsailor and downright strange Greetings from L.A. albums, this two-CD, 34-song anthology nicely condenses the artist's nine-album, nine-year evolution from folk innocent to soul-scorched iconoclast. Heard in this context, the title song's tale of a sheltered romantic who befriends and ultimately condemns an uncompromising vagrant feels like it's the young Buckley confronting the artist he would later become. Profoundly moving and richly rewarding, Morning Glory finds resonance between the two sides of Buckley's genius that he was unable to reconcile in his own short life. -- Bill Forman