jeff buckley: my considered opinion

Back when I worked in ComputerScope, I hired a smart young girl to help out with the sysadmin work. We had an office to ourselves in the basement which allowed us freedom to listen to music on speakers rather than on headphones, but we were seldom in agreement about what we should listen to - in particular, she was into the likes of Jeff Buckley, Nick Drake, and Belle and Sebastian, who belong to a genre (or genres; maybe it's not fair to lump them all into one bucket) I've never really been into. A week ago I accidentally stumbled on a solo musician/singer in one of the local bars who, among his covers, did a gorgeous rendition of Buckley's Hallelujah, which made me wonder if maybe I'd been too hasty to completely dismiss this stuff. So this past weekend - while wandering around Dublin with the same girl - I picked up a second-hand copy of Grace, as my attempt to borrow hers was hampered by it being somewhere in transit from Australia. Having listened to it a bit, I have (re)formed My Opinion: the music's great, but I really don't much like the quavery vocals. What really impressed me about the guy in the bar was that he had a far more robust voice, and I think Buckley's music benefits from this.

(yes, yes, Hallelujah is a Cohen cover. I'm sorry. Buckley's is the version I'm familiar with.)

my brother gets his mugshot in the papers

This would be the Diving One as opposed to the American One: he and two colleagues found this and got a big write-up in a local paper.