Released
on July 3rd, 1969, the debut LP from Nick Drake, Five Leaves Left,
turns 55 years old today. While initially met with critical and
commercial ambivalence, in the wake of his tragic death only five years
after its release, its status has become elevated over the past half
century into being recognized as one of the greatest folk rock creations
of the era.
Drake suffered from
depression and anxiety, which manifested in the deep melancholy of his
music, with his recordings affecting a much more introspective and
haunted incarnation of Donovan. His singing style, to my ears at least,
contains that same kind of wispy delicacy, though his lyrics turn into
existential insecurities, as opposed to hippy idealism. It's the kind
of morose introspection that, a decade later, would find a welcome home
in the post-punk-turned-Goth malaise of performers like Robert Smith of
The Cure.
The album was
produced largely via fully live performances with no overdubs. Drake
would set himself up in the middle of the studio where he'd perform his
vocals and acoustic guitar while being surrounded by the other musicians
in a semicircle formation, utilizing the studio's tiered layout to
create unique acoustic environments through the positioning of players
on different levels. The title of the album is a reference to a
particular brand of cigarette rolling papers, which had the message
"five leaves left" stamped on the appropriate paper near the end of the
pack.
Upon its release, it
received mostly lacklustre commentary from the critics of the day. Disc
and Music Echo described the album as "interesting" and said, "His
guitar work is soft, gentle and tuneful; his voice highly attractive,
husky and bluesy—but his songs uncertain and indirect." It concluded,
"It's more a restful album than a stimulating one." Perhaps the
subtlety of Drake's style simply failed to make an impact at the time,
but age has revealed its true depth and passion, allowing the emotional
complexity of his songs to grow and find the appreciation they rightly
deserve.
Drake's career would
prove to be sadly short, with the artist only releasing two more LPs
before withdrawing from performing and recording after the third in
1972. He retreated from the music business to his parent's home in
rural Warwickshire, where he was eventually found dead of an overdose of
antidepressants on November 25, 1974. He was only 26 years old. While
his career was active, he gathered only limited attention from music
collectors, remaining an obscure, mostly forgotten artist through the
remainder of the decade, but that all started to change with the release
of a retrospective compilation in 1979. Since then, he's received many
accolades for his work, with his catalogue receiving numerous reissues
and critical reappraisals.
I
only discovered these works in the early 2000s as I was on the lookout
for unfamiliar music from the late 1960s. Once I heard these albums, I
couldn't believed I'd never encountered this music before. Since then,
Nick Drake's music has become a go-to whenever I'm looking for something
to put me in an introspective, plaintive mood.
