Second Grace - The Music of Nick Drake

CD Second Grace - The Music of Nick Drake Christopher O'Riley

Considering that he was relatively little-known during his lifetime, it is fascinating how deeply the songs of British singer-songwriter-guitarist Nick Drake (1948 –1974) have influenced those who came after him. His three studio albums (Five Leaves Left -- Island, 1969, Bryter Layter -- Island, 1970, Pink Moon -- Island, 1972 plus Time of No Reply, a retrospective containing previously unreleased material) have not only refused to become dated but have consistently remained in the vanguard, widely emulated but always a step or two beyond where anyone else would dare follow. Drake’s moodily pantheistic lyrics and icily intellectual, disruptive, sensually rioting chord structures, presented via a dauntingly complex yet primal finger-picking style and throaty vocals, are profoundly moving but also unsettling -- seductive, heart-rending, unknowable. Now championed by movie star Brad Pitt, who has produced a documentary about him (and even heard in Volkswagen ads) this most introverted of troubadours is finally as famous as he always deserved to be. In Christopher O’Riley’s dazzlingly intuitive piano settings on his World Village album Second Grace, Nick Drake’s melodies, with their deceptively simple folklore-derived sing-alongs, uneven, jazz-inflected rhythms and swirling, iridescent gleanings from French Impressionism, shine as never before.