Nick Drake – The Making Of Five Leaves Left (Island/UME) 4-CD Box Set
The Making Of Five Leaves Left, a project nine years in gestation, was released on July 25th via UMR/Island Records. This Nick Drake Estate authorised edition comprises over 30 previously unheard outtakes from the sessions which gradually became Five Leaves Left (1969) and is available as 4 CD and 4 LP boxed sets. The 13th Floor’s Faith Hamblyn has a listen…
Nick Drake is one of folk’s greatest mysteries, and The Making Of Five Leaves Left provides us titillating insights. We hear him speaking to the recording engineer, his one-take recordings and cuts that didn’t make the album that show his complexity. On Mayfair, he’s in a jazz mood, which is gone like a sunbeam behind a cloud by the start of Time Has Told Me.
Nick wasn’t always standing in the rain or squelching through English countryside in oversized knitwear; he could be flirty or cocky. Better lyrically than Tim Buckley, he falters between tracks, but Fruit Tree and Saturday Sun are sure shots straight off. Strange Face starts the set of alternate takes on the first disc, and you can compare the arrangement changes track by track.
Day Is Done closes out the album side one, and you hear the difference between orchestration and a sparse delivery. They’re majestic for opposite reasons, and you follow along with the process that happened in studio – personal music or universal. My Love Left With The Rain has a work-in-process feel, which is lovely to listen to. Nick Drake feels his way through the track with its build in mind, playing different parts and discussing it. Who doesn’t want to spy on a late-‘60s man of mystery?
The second disc’s Made To Love Magic, amongst the outtakes, is whimsical and delicate, bohemian. Nick Drake speaks along while playing, breaking the spell, admitting to being drunk and playing badly. It’s a magic trick, interrupting the listener, then sinking them back into the song. It’s intoxicating.
Time Has Told Me with a different bassline makes it more sardonic; still world-weary, but a little funkier. Increasing the tempo for Strange Face makes the melancholy lighter – now with the rhythm of a passing train. Not necessarily better, if you’re fond of shoegazing, but certainly different when it’s suddenly got the blues.
The third disc opens with Time Of No Reply, and still his known muse of winter, and time, closing in. There’s catharsis in moody folk, but there’s an easy poetic beauty as well. There’s five leaves left on a tree or in your cigarette-paper packet, but irony has charm. It’s like listening to Wes Anderson as an album – so stylish, and complex with the appearance of being easy and effortless.
Mayfair is another track that captures an upbeat jazz mood that showcases another, brighter, side of Nick Drake. It’s a weird, lonely existence, but you can dance, and it turns out Drake can groove. A standout of the extra tracks is an out take of River Man – you can hear that Drake isn’t humourless; he’s watching everyone and everything the same as all of us, and he’s got things to tell us about it.
Hearing the different moods of the tracks with Nick Drake speaking in between and along with the songs is fascinating. You get a glimpse of the life behind the work that hasn’t been seen before – he’s hesitant, accomplished, inspired. We’ll never know quite why he died so early, but this is a comprehensive, care-filled archive.
Faith Hamblyn
The Making Of Five Leaves Left is out now on Island/UME Records
