In the absence of any new tunes, all the excitement here comes in the fine detailing - for example, the luscious sitar-sounding guitars throughout "Dream Brother", the sudden burst of the Cocteau Twins’ "Ivo" nine minutes into "The Way Young Lovers Do" (JB was/is rumoured to be embroiled with the Cocteaus’ Liz Fraser), the angelic chorus choir (taped, presumably) on "Hallelujah" and the rather clumsy new lyrics tacked on to the end of same ("I used to live with Leonard before I knew ya" - sheesh!). As a document of the live JB experience for those of us yet to experience the real thing it trounces the rather fragile-sounding "Live At Sin-E", and for that reason is essential for some of us - ‘Electrical process’ says the label, quite correctly - but nowhere near as essential as a new album proper would be.

JEFF BUCKLEY Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk (Columbia)

JEFF BUCKLEY Everybody Here Wants You (Columbia)

Barely a year after his tragic, premature and senseless death in the Mississippi, the posthumous Jeff Buckley industry grinds into being (with a little more haste, it has to be said, than it took the posthumous Buckley Sr industry to get going). "Sketches..." is a triple album of demos for the follow up to his still-stunning "Grace" debut, working title "My Sweetheart, The Drunk", which he was working on at the time of his death. Included are thirteen tracks with full band, recorded with Television guitarist Tom Verlaine on production duties (and allegedly rejected by Jeff: controversy rages as to whether these songs should ever have seen the light of day), seven crude 4-track demos taped by Buckley alone, and what must be one of his earliest recordings, a version of "Satisfied Mind" performed on the WFMU radio programme "The Music Faucet".

There are extensive sleevenotes charting the genesis of the music released here, as well as a "Message to the Fans" from his mother, Mary Guibert, who was responsible for this album, that attempts to appease those who would rather this material remained in the vaults. Tantalisingly, there are also suggestions that albums of b-sides, outtakes and early material may surface at some point in the distant future.

In the meantime, "Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk" is as close as we’re ever going to get to a second Jeff Buckley album, and even then only one of these 21 tracks is in anything approaching a finished form. That doesn’t prevent "Sketches..." being, in places and predominately in the Tom Verlaine material, stunning. The best track is undoubtedly "Everybody Here Wants You", a slinky, soulful and understated number that sounds like it could’ve fallen off the second side of Stevie Wonder’s "Talking Book". Other highlights include opener "The Sky Is A Landfill" and the two versions of the ominously prescient "Nightmare By The Sea", which may well be destined to become Jeff’s "Fruit Tree" ("Stay with me under these waves, tonight/Be free for once in your life tonight").

For demos these band tracks are highly accomplished, but what you’ll notice that, especially compared to "Grace", they’re a little lacking in tonal colouring, being just guitars/bass/drums, and with almost none of Jeff’s vocal acrobatics on top. How much of this is due to Tom Verlaine’s production it’s hard to say, but certainly Television’s albums majored on order and regimentation, almost like music produced by the application of mathematical theories, a style that may have cramped Buckley’s trademark sonic freefalling.

Of the 4-track recordings, well, they’re nice to have, but some of them are a bit wretched, particularly the horrible prog/glam mutation "Murder Suicide Meteor Slave", and the cover of Genesis’ "Back In N.Y.C." is a nice idea that, in this pre-pre-production form, doesn’t really come off.

So "Sketches..." might be something of a mixed bag of curios, and in no sense could it or should it be considered a bona fide follow-up to "Grace", but it contains a rich vein of fine music that deserves to be heard by the faithful, and ample further evidence of the tragic waste of talent that seems to have cursed that family. But draw some small comfort by the last words on this album: "One thing’s for certain, when it comes my time/I’ll leave this old world with a satisfied mind". We can only hope it happened like that.

Not only is "Everybody Here Wants You" the finest five minutes on "Sketches...", it’s also "The last Jeff Buckley single", if you believe the adverts. Hmmm. Available in The Man’s usual pointless multiplicity of formats (and not on vinyl, of course), you can buy as one CD backed with "Lover, You Should’ve Come Over (Live And Acoustic In Japan)" and "Tongue", both of which were on 1995’s "Last Goodbye" 10" single, or you can do the decent thing as I did and buy the other CD, which gets you an otherwise unavailable 4-track demo ("Thousand Fold"), a ‘road version’ (i.e. pointless sub-Pearl Jam grunge blustering) of "Eternal Life" and "Hallelujah" from the French import "Live At The Bataclan" album.

JEFF BUCKLEY Mystery White Boy (Columbia)

So short a career, but whilst the late Jeff Buckley burned he did so brilliantly. The bulk of the continued adoration his memory receives is based on the greatness of his sole fully realised studio album, 1994's close-to-immaculate "Grace". There's a wealth of peripheral material available, to which this live compilation is a welcome addition, but the reason some people still crave every last barrel scraping and archive clearing is the glory of the seven original songs and three cover versions (which skidded between Leonard Cohen, Benjamin Britten and Elkie Brooks with scant regard for fad or fashion) that made the mystery white boy's name (and made it more than his father's ever was, in itself an astounding achievement).

"Mystery White Boy" collects together a dozen recordings from the 1995/6 tour of the same name, captured in such diverse locations as Hamburg, Melbourne, Paris and San Francisco. All are as rendered direct to the soundboard DAT machine on the night, these two-track tapes permitting no post-gig sweetening. This is the real deal, and thankfully a more extended outing than the two existing mini-albums "Live At Sin-E", which captures his early New York café days, and "Live From The Bataclan", a French import that partly documents another date on the Mystery White Boy tour. Seven of the songs represented are drawn from "Grace", the remainder being previously unreleased compositions ("I Woke Up In A Strange Place", "What Will You Say", "Moodswing Whiskey") or covers (Gershwin's "The Man That Got Away and, wonder of wonders, Big Star's "Kanga Roo").

Mouth-watering as the specifics above might sound, "Mystery White Boy" is a surprisingly drab experience. It just floats by for 80 minutes or so, without drawing the listener (or this listener) into the deep, dark well of Buckley's immense talent. That elastic soul voice still swoops, ducks and dives as gracefully (pun unintended) as ever it did, the songs remain some of the most astonishing ever committed to tape and his regular band operate on ESP throughout, but maybe over-familiarity has rendered these recordings less impressive than they could, or should, have been. (I had five versions of "Eternal Life", at the last count.) The three new compositions do little to leaven proceedings either, being substantially half-written charm-free 4/4 plodders that allow scant opportunity for either bard or band to take flight.

For me, this album is a well-intentioned failure, and I type that as someone who greedily hoards every last JB b-side I can get my hands on. It may sate the devoted, for a while, but it adds nothing to the legend, which is a genuine shame.

JEFF BUCKLEY Live In Chicago (SMV)

The world has not been starved of Jeff Buckley material. Since his tragic and untimely death in the swell of the Mississippi, we have been treated to a double album of soundboard recordings from his "Mystery White Boy" world tour and a triple, "Sketches (For My Sweetheart The Drunk)", filled with the music he was working on at the time of his death. In addition, two live mini-albums, "Live At Sin-E" and "Live From The Bataclan", were released during his lifetime, all of which explains, extends and supports the JB legend that sprung from his solitary studio work, the still-stupendous "Grace".

"Live In Chicago" promises to be something different. The first JB material to be enshrined on DVD, it's also the first Buckley gig to be officially released in its entirety. Taped on May 13, 1995 at the city's Cabaret Metro, production values could not be accurately described as lavish - five cameras were used, but most of them seemed to be pointing in the same direction - but they're serviceable enough. As with the recent "Mystery White Boy" album, however, the undoubted energy and proficiency displayed on the night itself seems to have been sapped by the (over)-familiarity of these songs, as most of the "Grace" album gets trundled out before a rightly-approving crowd yet again. So what delight is to be found is usually obtained from the incidentals, for example the three minute wordless introductory vocal part that "Dream Brother" has grown on this outing, an enjoyably raucous thrash through the MC5's "Kick Out The Jams" (which ends with Soul Coughing's guitar tech, Angry Dave, stagediving into the crowd) and an instrumental version of "Vancouver", later to surface posthumously with lyrics on "Sketches (For My Sweetheart The Drunk)".

Why should you buy the DVD instead of the cheaper VHS version? Aside from the theoretically improved sound and picture quality and obligatory instant access to each song, there are two bonus live-in-the-studio acoustic songs ("So Real" and "Last Goodbye"), a sparse discography, something that calls itself an electronic press kit (fifteen minutes of pretentious, sepia-shot PR puff from the mouth of the boy wonder, which suddenly becomes almost unbearably poignant with his closing desire "just to be in the world") and a Dolby Digital 5.1 surround soundtrack for anyone fortunate enough to make use of it. But the real reason you should buy this, on whatever format, is that it’s the closest you'll ever get to having a Jeff Buckley gig in your lounge, and, for all my reservations, that's enough to be eternally grateful to everybody involved.

JEFF BUCKLEY Live A L'Olympia Bruno Coquatrix (Columbia)

What a treat this album is. "Live A L'Olympia Bruno Coquatrix" (I have no idea what the Bruno Coquatrix postfix means, but it tags below the album title whenever it appears on the packaging and disc, so it's along for the ride here as well) is a Dutch import CD featuring music from a concert, recorded in Paris on July 6, 1995, from a series of shows that the late, great Buckley himself regarded as the pinnacle of his performing career. And although the world has never exactly been starved of live JB material - we have the "Live At Sin-É" mini-album documenting his NYC dark café days, and the "Live From The Bataclan", "Mystery White Boy" and "Live In Chicago" bulletins from the relentless, grinding touring schedule that accompanied his sole studio release, the still-astonishing "Grace" - even a cursory listen will alert the aficionado to the fact that this latest article is something very special indeed.

It takes seconds. It's in the opening sturm and drang of the oft-performed but rarely recorded "Lover, You Should Have Come Over", the way the band modulate the song from near silence to waves of crashing crescendo, then bring it back down for the close. It's in Buckley's edge of desperation, tangled-up-in-blue vocal cords. It's even in the mere fact that the packaging includes the lyrics to the song for the first time. That's it. And for the next hour you're kicking your legs in the air like a contented cat, even through renditions of the over-familiar "Dream Brother" (enlivened by "Creep"-style guitar throat-clearings before the chorus) and "Eternal Life".

What else is here that adds to the legend? "Kick Out The Jams" makes its debut appearance on a Buckley album, here prefaced by a rip-roaring James Brown-style introduction. There's an amusing impression of what "Kashmir" sounds like at 45 rpm, and another new cover, the wonderful "That's All I Ask", written by one H Ott, which, surprisingly, appears sourced from the same Nina Simone album as Buckley's beloved "Lilac Wine". And throughout there's the happy banter with the audience, crowd and artist engaged in a mutual feeding frenzy of affection and appreciation, culminating in Buckley's choked recognition of the moment when the multitudes raise their cigarette lighters during "Hallelujah", apparently for the first time.

And what isn't here that doesn't subtract? The encore performance of Big Star's "Kangaroo" has, perhaps judiciously, been excised: it’s one of my favourite songs by one of my favourite bands, and Buckley is one of my favourite performers, but his renditions are reputed to spiral off into improvised inconsequence, presenting the listener with a gruelling endurance test. And the booklet notes commiserate that the source recording was "an analog audio cassette which was found among Jeff's personal possessions. Our goal was to eliminate as much of the tape hiss and other sonic flaws as possible without processing away the natural sonic quality of the live performances ." But in truth the sound quality is perfectly acceptable, albeit a few dBs quieter than most modern CDs.

As a bonus the package is rounded out with a duet recorded with Azerbaijani singer Alim Qazimov at the Festival of Sacred Music in Saint-Florent-le-Veil a few weeks after the main feature, copious booklet notes, photographs and lyrics and even, if you can be bothered, "a secret code to access live footage on the internet". But it's the music you're here for, isn't it? Well, alongside "Grace", this is as good as Jeffy O'Buckle's music had time and space to get during his short stay on earth, which makes it a cherishable release.

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