The phrase "cult figure" has assumed new meaning, at least in the sense that an artist once had to be at least minimally inaccessible to qualify. Jeff Buckley may still have a cult following of some sort – as the first cult figure to be marketed as a cult figure, or something – but if there's anything unique about his status, it's that Columbia is setting some sort of record for different ways to release material posthumously. Certainly anyone who's browsed the shelves in any major record chain in recent years has come across one Buckley record or another. It's an interesting sleight of hand considering the artist had only released one EP of live material and one studio LP by the time he died in 1997, at 30.

What we have here is a two-CD, 34-song version of the four-song Live at Sin-é EP that was released in 1993 (nothing up my sleeve, nothing in my hand, then ... presto!). It comes as no surprise that the new version is a pretty good exhibit A when it comes to things a record label will do to milk a few more drops from an artist's work. But if the addition of all the extra material makes a poor introduction to Buckley as a solo artist (the original EP was a good one), for those already into him, there are any number of interesting moments, like his take on the work of Led Zeppelin, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Bob Dylan, and Nina Simone (diverse enough for you?), for example.