Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk

Sketches for My Sweetheart The Drunk is a compilation of scrapped songs and unfinished demos recorded by Jeff Buckley in preparation for his sophomore album. It was released on May 26, 1998, a year after he drowned in the Mississippi River.

Buckley used the title “My Sweetheart The Drunk” throughout the songwriting and demo-laying process. As the release is mostly unfinished, “Sketches Of” was added to the title, a small way to stress the incompleteness of the project. The twenty-track release incorporates newly-written songs alongside tracks from a scrapped album.

Standouts include “Morning Theft”, brimming with Buckley’s signature lyricism, and the sparse yet eerie “Opened Once”.

Reviews for the album were generally positive, with the AV Club describing it as “absolutely essential” despite the informality of the recordings.