Tim Buckley

CD version. Starsailor is the sixth album by Tim Buckley and the furthest he went from the folk singer of his first records. It was recorded at Whitney Studios in Glendale, California, between 10 and 21 September 1970. It was released that November on Straight, the label Herb Cohen co-owned with Frank Zappa. The album reunited Buckley with lyricist Larry Beckett after three records apart. It set his voice against free jazz textures, ranging from high shrieks to a deep baritone. It lost him part of his audience at the time, and the Cohen and Zappa split of 1976 kept it out of print for years. Reassessment came later, and Pitchfork placed it on its 2004 list of the best albums of the 1970s.

Buckley wrote the music, with Beckett and bassist John Balkin among the co-writers. He also produced the sessions, with Stan Agol engineering and Cohen as executive producer. The band includes two former members of the Mothers of Invention, Bunk Gardner on alto flute and tenor saxophone and his brother Buzz Gardner on trumpet and flugelhorn. Lee Underwood, Buckley's longtime guitarist, adds electric piano and pipe organ, with John Balkin on double and electric bass and Maury Baker on drums and timpani. According to Underwood, the title track was assembled from about sixteen overdubbed vocal tracks in different registers, a choir of Buckleys moving in and out of pitch. Song To The Siren, written almost three years earlier, is the one calm stretch of the record. Its later life was long: This Mortal Coil recorded it with Elizabeth Fraser in 1983, and the British band Starsailor took their name from the album. DownBeat gave it five stars in March 1971, while Robert Christgau graded it C minus. Reissues stayed scarce, from a short-lived Enigma Retro CD to a 4 Men With Beards LP in 2007.

This Music On CD edition (MOCCD14059, 2021), licensed from Warner Music Benelux, uses the 1989 Bizarre/Straight digital remaster by Bill Inglot and Ken Perry at K Disc Mastering. It comes in a jewel case with a four-page booklet.