Nick Drake - 'Family Tree' (Island) Released 09/07/07

Over the span of three albums - 'Five Leaves Left', 'Bryter Layter' and 'Pink Moon' covering some 3/4 years, Nick Drake left a legacy that still resonates today, yet each album in its time only sold some 5000 copies upon release. In his prime, the young Drake suffered from depression and insomnia, and this, coupled with his reluctance to perform live or be interviewed contributed to a distinct lack of commercial success and the perceived inability to connect led to much speculation about Drake's sexuality. Drake was a self taught guitarist with a style characterised by a use of cluster chords where he accents the dissonant effect of non-standard tunings through his vocal melodies, his lyrics crafted to complement and compound a mood that the melody first dictates.

'Family Tree' paints a portrait of the artist as a young man as he goes about the business of finding his voice at the families Far Leys home and their summer home at Aix En Provence in France during his gap year. This captures Drake as he frets with blues standards such as the chuggin' 'Black Mountain Blues' and 'If You Leave Me', with folk tunes such as 'All My Trials' all captured here with splendid lo-fi hiss. We witness themes developing in a preoccupation with the elements and the seasons of the natural world that were to pre-figure in his autumnal songbook such as the folksong 'Winter', 'Bird Flew By', 'Rain' and the dour 'Blossom' with "Black days of winter all were through...", and a mind-state bent towards the bluer end of the mood scale with 'Blues Run The Game' - "...wherever I have gone/ wherever I have been and gone/ the blues run the game...".

On tracks such as 'They're Leaving Me Behind', the startling 'Milk and Honey' and 'Tomorrow Is A Long Time' we find Drake the dreamy observer with his calling card voice and loose-strung guitar, and an altogether merrier Drake on 'My Baby's So Sweet' and Bert Jansch's 'Strolling Down The Highway' brings about a romantic freewheelin' streak - "...the sun shines all day long...". Good time charlie and toking tunes come with the blues standards 'Cocaine Blues' and 'Been Smoking Too Long' respectively - "...I got opium in my chimney/ no other life to chose/ nightmare made of hash dreams/ got the devil in my shoes...", yet it's the versions of 'Day Is Done' and the solo piano of 'Way To Blue' that were to appear on 'Five Leaves Left' that'll wow the fans.  

It's a cruel twist for the tragi-romantic artist that a Volkswagen ad in 2000 featured the title track from 'Pink Moon' resulting in more sales in one month than the previous thirty years. Like a true-Brit we find Nick Drake with a pre-occupation for the blessed weather, but Drake's was a susceptibility to the melancholic and autumnal moods that were inform his songs of sorrow and loss. Had Drake gone about the business of singing "pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile smile" or "I paint rainbows, all over yewr bleeews" and getting it on in Provence instead of bolstering his pre-disposition to depression through hashish, mushrooms and downers we may have had an altogether different romantic, rather than the tragic and doomed young man who ended up dying of an anti-depressant overdose aged 26. 'Family Tree' dusts off the old photos in the attic and airs the old recordings but labours in the fact that this is one for the fans alone.