1st November - Nick Drake's Bryter Layter

Artist – Album: Nick Drake – Bryter Layter

Released: 1^st November 1970

Sounds Like: A crisp November morning

Whether yesterday evening for you consisted of drunken debauchery at a Hallowe’en party or, like me, watching scary movies with no lights on, the chances are you require some gentle, soothing music this morning. Enter: Nick Drake.

Bryter Layter was Drake’s second album, and it’s also his most unchallenging; one where’d he moved very slightly away from the pastoral folk countryside of debut Five Leaves Left to a poppier setting, and one where he hadn’t yet been possessed by the demons that consumed him on final record Pink Moon.

‘Northern Sky’, though understated, stands amongst the greatest love songs of all time, the Hazey Jane’s (actually the name of a pretty good Scottish group) are brilliantly light folk-pop efforts, ‘Fly’ is as delicate as insect wings and ‘One of These Things First’ is busy and fun, bouncing along on Drake’s gossamer croon. All told, it’s a fantastically assured album and one that softly but confidently blows those Hallowe’en cobwebs away.

Albumaday... rating: 9/10

1.       Introduction – 1:33

2.       Hazey Jane II – 3:46

3.       At the Chime of a City Clock – 4:47

4.       One of These Things First – 4:52

5.       Hazey Jane I – 4:31

6.       Bryter Layter – 3:24

7.       Fly – 3:00

8.       Poor Boy – 6:09

9.       Northern Sky – 3:47

10.   Sunday – 3:42

Listen to ‘Hazey Jane II’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSZ9oX0rLgg

Also released on 1^st November:

1988: My Bloody Valentine – Isn’t Anything

Also released on 1^st November:

1970: Grateful Dead – American Beauty

Also released on 1^st November:

1994: Nirvana – MTV Unplugged in New York

1st September - Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left

Artist - Album: Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left
Released: 1st September 1969
Sounds like: living on Solid Air

Nick Drake is music's best answer to the neglected artist, ignored and unappreciated in his lifetime but declared a genius posthumously. Despite the fact that his three full albums are now each considered to be masterpieces, they would have been considered flops in their day had anyone even noticed they'd come out. The complete lack of success and his battles with mental illness marks him out as a kind of Van Gogh-lite, although admittedly his influence doesn't quite extend as far as the earless Dutchman's.

Five Leaves Left was his first album, and back then Drake wasn't beset by the depression brought about by his failure to sell any records. The music is pastoral and moody, but never maudlin and melancholy, nor as lonely, as with his later work. The English graduate plays with autumnal imagery and has a wistful tinge, but there's no sign of the hounded tone his later songs possessed.

The cult of Drake have placed the man on a pedestal alongside the great English poets, his heroes Blake and Yeats. This may be over-egging it a bit but tracks such as 'The Thoughts of Mary Jane', 'Fruit Tree' and 'Day is Done' have an equally distinctive Englishnessicity. Drake also liked to experiment with tunings on his expertly plucked guitar and the creativity didn't stop there - 'Cello Song', 'River Man' and 'Way to Blue' are unique compositions, nominally folk but really some baroque form of original thinking that we've yet to name. We haven't had to; nobody since has made music like this.

Albumaday... rating: 8/10

1. Time Has Told Me – 4:27
2. River Man – 4:21
3. Three Hours – 6:16
4. Way to Blue – 3:11
5. Day Is Done – 2:29
6. Cello Song – 4:49
7. The Thoughts of Mary Jane – 3:22
8. Man in a Shed – 3:55
9. Fruit Tree – 4:50
10. Saturday Sun – 4:03

Listen to 'Cello Song': you can't on YouTube! There's no footage of him performing in existence. Just buy the album already...

Also released on 1^st September:

1987: R.E.M - Document

25th Feb - Nick Drake's Pink Moon

Artist – Album: Nick Drake – Pink Moon

Released:  25^th February 1975

Sounds Like: A gentle Armageddon is on its way

Nick Drake has attained near mythic status over the course of the last decade or so. Somehow there’s romance in the tragedy of the young hero who, unloved in his time, takes his own life. See also Elliott Smith and Jeff Buckley. But the legend doesn’t arise from our love of heartbreak alone – although he was only 23 when he released Pink Moon, his third and final album, with it he completed a beautiful hat trick of albums that deserve to garner the acclaim they are now afforded.

Title track ‘Pink Moon’ is probably the liveliest track on the album, involving as it does hushed vocals, acoustic guitar and piano. On first glance it’s a lovely, sunny track about some strange natural phenomenon, but on closer inspection it’s Drake is welcoming in the apocalypse with a vacant smile on his face. “Pink Moon gonna get ye all” indeed.

Although it’s not easy, the rest of the album finds Drake crawl further within himself. Gone is the piano, and Drake lyrics become less decipherable. Song titles like ‘Parasite’ and ‘Free Ride’ give some indication of the sinister turn his words have taken. His masterful knowledge of guitar chords and strange tunings keep his plucked acoustic tracks interesting and the his delivery seems alarmingly content, as though he’s already given himself up to things behind the sun.

And then it’s finished. At only 28 minutes long it’s the shortest album I’ve reviewed yet, but the consistent brilliance of the whole record means that it can be played through on a never-ending loop ‘til Judgement Day.  

Albumaday... rating: 10/10

1.       Pink Moon – 2:06

2.       Place to Be – 2:43

3.       Road – 2:02

4.       Which Will – 2:58

5.       Horn – 1:23

6.       Things Behind the Sun – 3:57

7.       Know – 2:26

8.       Parasite – 3:36

9.       Free Ride – 3:06

10.   Harvest Breed – 1:37

11.   From the Morning – 2:30

Listen to ‘From the Morning’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAmq-KeX18s

Also released on the 25^th February:

1995: Elliott Smith – Either/Or

Also released on the 25^th February:

2008: Sébastien Tellier - Sexuality