Nick Drake
Family Tree - Island 2007
Tracks: 1. Come in to the Garden / 2. They're Leaving Me Behind / 3. Time Piece / 4. Poor Mum / 5. Winter Is Gone / 6. All My Trials / 7. Mozart's Kegelstatt Trio / 8. Strolling Down the Highway / 9. Cocaine Blues / 10. Blossom / 11. Been Smoking Too Long -/ 12. Black Mountain Blues / 13. Tomorrow Is a Long Time / 14. If You Leave Me / 15. Here Comes the Blues / 16. Sketch, Pt. 1 / 17. Blues Run the Game / 18. My Baby's So Sweet / 19. Milk and Honey / 20. Kimbie / 21. Bird Flew By / 22. Rain / 23. Strange Meeting, Pt. 2 / 24. Day Is Done / 25. Come into the Garden / 26. Way to Blue -/ 27. Do You Ever Remember?
Comments:
If you consider investing in this Nick Drake release, you should probably realize that it mainly contains lo-fi homerecordings done before Drake's first album.
Much of the songs are folk-blues numbers, partly traditional and partly contemporary songs written by songwriters such as Jackson C. Frank, Bert Jansch or Bob Dylan. You can clearly hear that Drake is an excellent guitarist, but not especially interesting when it comes to blues-folk.
Most Interesting, of course, are the Nick Drake originals, of which several have not been released before in any form. The stand out among these is "Blossom", a great song that absolutely matches Drake's very best. "Rain" is also a very nice song.
Among the coverversions the Jackson C. Frank song "Blues Run the Game" is another highlight; could have been a Drake original.
There are excellent notes written by Nick's sister Gabrielle and his old friend Robin Frederick.
If you would like to get an overview of where the songs come from and who wrote them, the booklet is not very helpful. It's a shame that it is faster to go wikipedia to find out who actually wrote "Blossom" perhaps the most interesting addition to the Nick Drake catalogue - not surprisingly, it was Drake himself.
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