Every decade, some well-intentioned writer in Britain’s dad-rock magazines such as Mojo or Uncut reassesses the short life of Nick Drake, who died in 1974 leaving just three poor-selling albums of elegant, sometimes spare, intimate folk-pop.
Regrettably, the writers’ enthusiasm barely shifts the needle on Drake’s modest profile.
This year, things may be different: Uncut ran an interesting piece on the young, carefree and studious Drake before he became increasingly remote, depressive and reclusive in the years up to his suicide at 26. There’s also Nick Drake: The Life, a biography by Richard Morton Jack, written with the co-operation of Drake’s sister, the actress Gabrielle Drake, who curates her brother’s estate.
However, biographies tend to be bought by those already familiar with the artist and, similarly, posthumous collections of out-takes and juvenilia – such as Drake’s 2007 Family Tree – rarely deliver new followers.
Tribute albums are too often constrained by being respectful and reverent, an exception being the 2011 album by the Jason Parker Quartet, a Seattle jazz group who rethought Drake’s 1969 debut album Five Leaves Left in its entirety.
And the new Drake tribute double album, The Endless Coloured Ways, is also something different. The artists – Aldous Harding, Nadia Reid, Ben Harper, David Gray, Joe Henry with Meshell Ndegeocello, Radiohead’s Phil Selway and Emeli Sandé among them – have reinvented Drake’s acoustic Anglo-folk, sometimes radically or in their own image.
So, Irish post-punk rockers Fontaines D.C. grab Drake’s feverish finger-picking Cello Song (“if one day you should see me in the crowd, lend a hand and lift me to your place in the cloud”) and turn it into an up-tempo dancefloor filler, without sacrificing Drake’s emotional intensity.
Liz Phair picks up the pace and assertion of Free Ride; Reid takes a shimmering folk-pop approach to Drake’s exotically jazzy and gospel-tinged Poor Boy (from his ambitious, string- and horn-embellished soul-folk second album Bryter Layter); Harding with John Parish brings an appropriately relentless, minimalist and pulsing Krautrock groove to Drake’s drone-folk of Three Hours.
Feist places her voice over a quicksand of strings and soft beats for River Man, which reflects the translucent lyrics: “When she thought of summer rain calling for her mind again, she lost the pain and stayed for more.”
John Grant recreates Day Is Done with an orchestration of synths, and the mysterious title track to Drake’s final album Pink Moon (“none of you stand so tall, pink moon gonna get ye all”) is lifted into the ether by Norwegian singer Aurora. It was Drake’s biggest hit decades after his death when, in 1999, Volkswagen used it for an ad, which translated into album sales.
But that was a rare blip on the public’s radar of Drake, despite the best efforts of the well-intentioned. This time, however, 23 Drake songs have been inventively re-presented when his profile has rarely been higher. So, maybe ….
And his original albums of melodic, poetic, soulful songs and soft sandpapery vocals are online, still patiently awaiting that wider audience.
The Endless Coloured Ways: The Songs of Nick Drake, by Various Artists
The Endless Coloured Ways and Nick Drake’s albums are available digitally, on CD and vinyl.
