He wanted to hide from the world, Nick Drake, because his soul was shy and solitary, contemplative to the point of illness. That illness – depression – which consumed him in five years until his death at the age of 26. But Nick was a poet and couldn’t hide, because poets, as Nietzsche said, have no shame for their own intimate experiences, which they exploit. And so, in 1969, not yet twenty-one years old, he entered the recording studio with his acoustic guitar and produced what is now considered one of the best debuts in English music: Five Leaves Left. A truly shining gem, which remained hidden for many years. A record that sold less than 5000 copies upon its release. On November 25, 1974, Nicholas Rodney Drake left this world. He was found dead from an overdose of amitriptyline, an antidepressant. Next to him, on his bed, is a copy of The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus.

Fame is a sick fruit tree

After his debut album, the English musician recorded two more records, Bryter Layter in 1970 and his last obscure work, Pink Moon in 1972, both ignored by the public. For many years Nick Drake remained unknown and then, at the end of the 70s, thanks to a box set containing all his records, his name slowly began to circulate again. In the 90s his cult exploded on the Indie circuit: there are countless musicians who claim to have been influenced by his music and his poetics. Fifty years after his death, the hypersensitivity and depression that inevitably marked his career have become a paradigm. In the United Kingdom and America alone his records have sold – data from 10 years ago – more than two million copies and today, on Spotify, Nick Drake has 2.4 million monthly listeners. Not bad for a living artist who was so shy that he was almost unable to leave his house and was reluctant beyond all limits to perform in public.

There are still five left

In Five Leaves Left, a title taken from a pack of tobacco papers from the time which means “there are still five left”, the sadness has not yet completely taken over. The entire album moves on the level of an ethereal delicacy, a sweet melancholy that still does not give way to the existential abyss of “Pink Moon”. Nick Drake seems like a modern Orpheus who with his notes enchants not only men but also nature, ready to travel to the underworld to find beauty. His calm voice, free of jolts, recounts the landscapes of the soul with the external world as a backdrop with the detached gaze of the narrator afflicted by youthful loneliness. The greatness of Nick Drake, especially on this record, lies in the fact that the musician moves between existentialism and, to a lesser extent, romanticism, but always without a trace of self-pity. In the debut album there is also space for some faint rays of light that the contemplation of things can bring.

The music

Musically, all tracks follow Nick’s acoustic guitar and his obsessive work on intricate arpeggios and open, modal tunings, often modified. The arrangements are perfectly balanced thanks to the work of producer Joe Boyd, a true guide for Nick Drake in his early days. The singer-songwriter’s highly original poetics blends with the folk and jazz influences of the album, also marked by hints of classical music. The result is orchestral arrangements which, combined with the conga, vibraphone, piano and double bass, give depth to the acoustic guitar melodies.

The songs

The folk, almost reassuring atmosphere of “Time Has Told Me” opens Five Leaves Left. The electric guitar and piano provide the background to the arpeggios of the acoustic guitar while Nick sings, with a thread of faint hope, “one day our ocean will find the shore”. “River Man”, arranged in 5/4, is a ballad delicate, imbued with nocturnal summer atmospheres, a vision of the urgency of youth that questions the slowness of time and the percussion of “Three Hours” accompanies the cinematic images of a train journey between Cambridge and London, used as a pretext to talk about the impossibility of telling the world the depth of one’s emotions. It would take too long to describe the expressive intimacy of all the songs on the album, each one packaged with an unusual compositional maturity for a boy of just twenty years old. However, it is worth mentioning the piece that is the album’s masterpiece: “Day is Done”.

The day is over

In this song Nick Drake seems to transfigure the sunset of the day into a reflection on the end of things. The sweet, almost elegiac melancholy of the song recalls the tones of John Keats, who saw a poignant beauty in the transience of time. As we said, in Drake there is never self-pity: his voice, calm and contemplative, welcomes the inevitability of the end with a quiet dignity. It is impossible to remain impassive in front of this song: if the day is over, its light has rested on eternal music, capable of continuing to touch the most intimate strings of the soul. On the music of Nick Drake today one cannot speculate on theorems such as the hypersensitive succumbing in a world of insensitive or on the young death planned to elevate art to myth. There is a single, lucid truth, that of an artist who left us too soon but who found a way to make the transience of life a timeless song.

Author: Nick Drake
Title: Five Leaves Left
Type: Songwriter
Year: 1969 (Island)
Editorial rating: 10/10