Additional information
Personnel: Nick Drake (vocals, acoustic guitar, piano); Richard Thompson (electric guitar); Clare Lowther (cello); Paul Harris (piano); Tristan Fry (vibraphone, drums); Danny Thompson (bass); Rocki Dzidzornu (congas). Nick Drake's debut album encapsulates a marriage between folk music and the singer-songwriter genre. Part Donovan, part Jim Webb, he articulated an aching romanticism at a time when progressive rock ran rampant. Beautiful melodies and fragrant accompaniment, in particular Robert Kirby's stunning string arrangements, enhance the artist's sense of longing in which warm, but understated, vocals accentuate the album's passive mystery. An aura of existential cool envelops the proceedings, accentuated by Danny Thompson's sonorous bass lines and Drake's poetic imagery. The result is a shimmering, autumnal collection, reflective but never morbid. It's a tragedy that Drake never lived to see how his stature has grown.
Reviews
Entertainment Weekly (5/12/00, p.24) - "On his ageless debut, everything - Drake's lispy voice and delicate guitar fingerpicking, arranger Robert Kirby's stately strings - feels shrouded in mist....Drake's most glorious miniatures." - Rating: A Q (11/99, p.162) - Included in Q Magazine's Best Folk Albums of All Time - "...The pinnacle of a melancholy canon of work so distinctive that admirers can only speculate miserably on what might have been." Alternative Press (3/01, p.88) - "...With a voice paradoxically feather-light and grave, [one] of the most beautiful and melancholy albums ever recorded..." Q (Magazine) (p.122) - "[T]he mesmerising beauty of such songs as 'Way To Blue' and 'Time Has Told Me' perfectly evoke a world of peaceful rumination far from all the city madness." Mojo (Publisher) (7/00, p.99) - "...Represents the first flourish of promise....God, how damn confident it all sounds. He knew how good he was..." NME (Magazine) (10/2/93, p.29) - Ranked #74 in NME's list of the 'Greatest Albums Of All Time.'
