Nick Drake – Bryter Layter (1971)

I don't know why it took me such a long time to get acquainted with Nick Drake's music. He's clearly one of the biggest influences on the folky singer-songwriters I have listened to throughout this millennium. Maybe Nick Drake wasn't that well known in Finland. I asked my father whether he had listened to Nick Drake in his youth and he had never even heard of him. Nick Drake makes folk music with beautiful melodies and ambitious orchestrations. His music is quite typical singer-songwriter style, but his albums are accompanied by a range of amazing musicians. On this album for example, he's playing with Fairport Convention, John Cale and some studio musicians that worked with The Beach Boys. The album definitely has some excellent orchestration in addition to Drake's vocals and folky acoustic guitar.



Personally, I probably like Nick Drake's debut album Five Leaves Left the most because on that album the melodies are most melancholic. However, Bryter Layter has a more ambitious orchestration and I really do enjoy all the string arrangements and jazzy saxophones on the album. Nick Drake's sound is timeless. I could imagine myself listening to this album for the first time and think that it's a new singer songwriter talent. The production is absolutely brilliant. Then again, when you listen to these songs on a longer playlist, you notice that the songs are mastered so low that you can hardly hear them with the normal volume.

I don't know why sad people always make the best music in my opinion, but they just do. I guess you really need to have strong emotions to come up with brilliant art. Happiness is rarely as strong as the more melancholic emotions. Nick Drake was severely depressed for the last years of his life and he ended it by taking an overdose of pills at 26 years old. It's very sad that he didn't stay on this planet for longer as I'm sure he would've made some great music. Then again, I guess the brilliance of his music was partly that great because of his condition. At least the same goes for Elliott Smith, who is one of my all time favourite artists.

The album starts with some amazing classical style guitar picking and airy strings in the Introduction.  The intro continues straight to the first proper song Hazey Jane II which is quite a fast  tempo song for a Nick Drake song. It actually sounds quite a lot like Belle & Sebastian with Drake's hazy vocals and nicely rolling rhythm accompanied by a trumpet. At the Chime of a City Clock has an ominous jazzy groove that I absolutely love. These kinds of songs are the kinds of songs where Drake is at his best. The melody is very melancholic and mystic and there are some jazzy elements that make it more interesting than your average folk song. One of These Things First has some authentic pianos in a central role that give this song a slightly different sound. Hazey Jane I has some amazing guitar playing. This song really shows that Nick Drake wasn't just an average singer-songwriter. He was also a phenomenal guitarist. The title-track Bryter Layter is an instrumental song that has a lazy bossanova kind of sound with flute in a central role. In Fly, you can definitely hear the sounds of Beach Boys, although, as a song, it's completely different. The song doesn't have too many minor chords, but there's still clear suppressed melancholy in it. The chorus is really beautiful. Poor Boy is almost like a real jazz song. There is a nice bluesy groove in this song along with some gospel choir in the background. The piano is playing nice jazzy tunes. The saxophone solo is phenomenal. Northern Sky is a great folk ballad with amazingly beautiful vocals by Drake. The album ends with a well-orchestrated melancholic song Sunday that has some excellent flute sequences.

When I was listening to Elliott Smith, Sufjan Stevens and all the other great folk singer-songwriters of 90's and 00's, I never thought there was something quite like that recorded more than 20 years earlier. Nick Drake has become really important to me, but I'm sure his music would be even more important had I discovered him earlier in my youth.

Listen to the album on Spotify.