Buckley’s Restless Spirit, Rich Music Preserved

Though this two-CD collection of works in progress ends with an aching version of the folk song “Satisfied Mind,” Buckley sounded anything but satisfied. But we can thank his restless spirit for the richness of the music he left behind at his death.

Even the most sketchy of these performances--recorded between the release of his 1993 debut album, “Grace,” and his drowning last year--crackles with the fire of both artistic and spiritual quests. And the more-finished pieces are, uniformly, masterful balancing acts of raw nerve-endings (akin to John Lennon’s early solo work) and inner depth (befitting the album’s dedication to late qawwali force Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan).

Musically, Buckley was reaching fruitfully in multiple directions, from “Everybody Here Wants You,” a ‘70s-ish soul experiment worthy of Marvin Gaye or Al Green, to “New Year’s Prayer,” a “Kashmir”-echoing meditation on the search for love heard in two versions, to the aggressive outbursts of “The Sky Is a Landfill” and “Witches’ Rave.” Emotionally, the scope is just as arrestingly ambitious, moving from the angry petulance of “Landfill” to the Khan-inspired, prayer-like calm of “You & I.”

The package makes it easy to mourn the loss of an artist just started on a journey of vast possibilities, but it also makes it easy to celebrate the accomplishments he left behind.