Sock Free Hideaway

BEATS OF LOVE 

152.  Bryter Layter LP by Nick Drake 

THERE WAS an actual time just prior to its studio completion when this product threatened to sell and make everyone involved in its production thrilled.

A period that echoes the hopeful defiance voiced by Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King in real time during the aftermath of Tet offensive. That cut through to society at large. Times then, of optimistic bravery.

Cutting himself off from the security and safety of Cambridge to decamp in the capital, Drake's more urbanised lyrics appear to suggest he felt dwarfed rather than looming large. There's a vulnerability but determination in his voice. A drum kit changed the studio dynamic with Fairport players, amongst others adding to his distinctive finger picked guitar, creating a more upbeat sound. That said, Kirby's arrangements maintain that distinctive wispy pastoral elegance that marked out his debut. 

We all recall playing tunes to amazed small pockets of folk and then mapping the path to a grander scale. Forget about the dark stuff. This record maps a path by searching out pop tones and scaling things up perfectly. Forget too the theorised accounts of its delay and subsequent commercial failure, but bask in the breezy majesty of its repeat play. And let that reticent but compellingly transportive voice whisk you clean away.

We haven’t had a truly influential political voice cut through the cultural noise since Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, which is a tragedy. But it's no tragedy that nobody has ever topped Drake's jazz-laced folk-pop.