Fame is but a fruit tree. (Five Leaves Left - Nick Drake)

Member Name: peel.rebekah

Product:	Five Leaves Left - Nick Drake
Date:	29/06/01 (602 review reads)
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May 1969 saw a soft and brown voiced young man recording his first album at Sound Technics Ltd., Old Church Street, SW3; Nick Drake's first darling disc, Five Leaves Left, failed to make Drake's desired impact on the fickle world of music; two albums later, the manic depressive took his own life.

A sad introduction to the alluring album that I'm about to review, but necessary information if you are to fully understand and value the beauty of Drake's music.

Imagine the times in which this music was being written: Imagine the halcyon days of free love; the general use of marijuana (hence the title? The small piece of cardboard you find five papers from the end in a packet of Rizlas?); the increased influence of black music on the charts; the beginnings of rock; the aspirations of the youth to find their voice...And one lonely, melancholy gentleman standing in its midst.

Informed by Folk, Blues, Jazz and Country and Western, this album takes you the first steps into Drake's head. Fans of his (since his death, a cult following has been inspired by his story and his music) seem to have a darker inclination to his final album; a foreboding anthem to the end, I know, but this has to be my favourite of Drake's works, because somewhere, hidden away, one can still find the tint of hope and aspiration of the man behind the illness.

*Time Has Told Me.

Slightly twangy Country and Western chords are accompanied by an acoustic guitar; all so simple, but somewhat out of the presupposed formal rhythm of things (it appears to be written in 3/4, but the chords run long, as do Drake's words, a theme he plays with throughout the album). A gentle, yielding, mellow melody becomes the genesis for this indulgent debut. The words are not necessarily what one would expect from a twenty-young-something taking his first plunge into the world of recording: The ominous sadness flows straight from the start:

Time h
as told me
You're a rare rare find
A troubled cure
For a troubled mind...

Time has told me
You came with the dawn
A soul with no footprint
A rose with no thorn

"A soul with no footprint" was the phrase adopted by Drake's mother in later describing her son to the press.

*River Man.

Folk has never been this good: Sweeping you away with the words, the violins and the tide; tickling you with the soft guitar pluckings - there are orchestral maneuvers in the darkness, while Drake caresses the back of your neck with his warming voice. This, I suppose, is really, truely Folk, as it seems to retell the crossing of a terminal river, in a musically mythical way:

Going to see the river man
Going to tell him all I can
About the plan
For Lilac time.

*Three Hours.

An almost upbeat crossbreed between obvious Country and Western and All About Eve: Acoustic guitar is plucked sprightly, a bass trundles below, and those Folky tam tam drum things bounce like a train trying to keep on its tracks. This song feels very much like a procession, a ritual, a dance for rain. It feels like a definitive journey, trying to culminate in a final destination. Drake's slightly husky lyrics totally undermine what joviality there is in the rhythm:

Three hours from speaking
Everyone's flown
Not wanting to be
Seen on their own

This happens constantly throughout the album: One wonders at the veneer of the music, then suddenly the lyrics tear you from this safe haven, and present you with a whirling downward spiral of despair.

*Way to Blue.

Drake calling for enlightenment and happiness through a streaming parade of strings; they fall to a flow underneath his words and crescendo when he's not there. It's so hard to express the needy call this song possesses, the mournful lament of the strings, the beauty found in such simple rh
ymes.

*Day is Done.

Eleanor Rigby lives again (in more ways than one) in this portent of a piece:

When the day is done
Down to earth then sinks the sun
Along with everything that was lost and won
When the day is done

Acoustic guitar (played by Drake) is accompanied by violins and cellos. Sweetly, the violins take flight with the lyrics "When the birds have flown".

*Cello Song.

This could have been the best song on the album: Those train tracks are back, this time led by the acoustic guitar, followed by the flowing strings (cello) pulling the melody down to Drake's poetry:

You would seem so frail
In the cold of the night
When the armies of emotion
Go out to fight

I haven't used the word 'haunting' yet, I've been saving it for this song: This song is 'haunting'.

*The Thoughts of Mary Jane.

From twee beginnings (a chirping flute), comes my least favourite song on the album. Unfortunately this feels a little too Carpentery for me, a tad too soap advert, slightly Little House on the Prairie. Still musically sound, I hasten to add, but the melody flies away with a girlish smile, rather than Drake's normal masculine frown.

*Man in a Shed.

A funky bass line introduces Drake's Blues and Jazz influences, the beat is quickly taken up by the piano, with the guitar gawkily rambling along side. An alternate wretched blues tale:

Well there was a man
Lived in a shed
Spent most of his days out of his head
For his shed was rotten let in the rain
Said it was enough to drive any man insane

Culminating in:

But the man is me, yes, and the girl is you
So leave your house come into my shed
Please stop my world from raining through my head.

*Fruit Tree.

Without a doubt the most wondrous song on the album. I can't find the words to describe th
e absolute delicacy of these sensual strings, tired oboes, and Drake's fated words. The lyrics don't feel at all comfortable with the intimate melody that pulls at your heart, yet they display the true meaning of this album, and the true yearnings of Drake's aspirations:

Fame is but a fruit tree
So very unsound
It can never flourish
'Til its stock is in the ground

So men of fame
Can never find a way
'Til time has flown
Far from their dying day.

I am never to be immune to the intense emotions that this song inspires: I will always find tears filling my eyes, and my mind wondering, wandering.

They'll all know
That you were here when you're gone

*Saturday Sun.

A Bluesy finale; laid back and sleazy chords, with a brushed high hat and a period vibraphone. The lyrics hint at the good times that were had, but also at the dwindling goodness of these times in his memories: A kind of "perhap" left at the end of an undoubtable morose debut.

I apologise for the amount of lyrics quoted in this opinion, but I feel that Drake's words speak louder than my own.

Five Leaves Left is an Island Records recording, available in CD format from Amazon for 10.99...but if anybody has the vinyl, let me know - you can name your price.

Enjoy.

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