Nick Drake, Long a Folk Mystery, Is (Partly) Revealed
When the striking TV spot first aired in 1999, the English folk singer — who died of an antidepressant overdose in 1974 after three brilliant, barely noticed albums — had begun a posthumous ascent from cognoscenti secret handshake to cultural touchstone. The spot spring-loaded it.
Nowadays, Drake's influence is common. You can hear aspects of his sound — a hushed baritone coo unfurled over an eddy of fingerstyle guitar — in the intimate soul of Annahstasia, the finely stitched folk-rock of Joan Shelley and the fragile indie-pop of Skullcrusher (who has a single called 'Song for Nick Drake'). Shelley and Skullcrusher contributed to a 2023 tribute album, 'The Endless Coloured Ways: The Songs of Nick Drake,' as did the Irish rock band Fontaines D.C., who delivered a potent version of ''Cello Song.'
'We're all really big Nick Drake fans,' said the group's Conor Deegan III, who first heard Drake's music in the VW ad and responded, like his bandmates, to 'something melancholy and otherworldly' about him.
That otherworldliness is magnified by the scant evidence of his time in the world. A famously shy performer who played few shows before he was sidelined by mental illness, there are few documents and no known film footage of his music-making. Notwithstanding home recordings circulated on bootlegs and disappointingly scattershot compilations, his three studio LPs — 'Five Leaves Left' (1969), 'Bryter Layter' (1971) and 'Pink Moon' (1972) — have stood as Drake's immaculate legacy.
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