Review Summary: His most fleshed-out and varied album, it might alienate the hardcore Drake fans but is the perfect introduction to an oft-overlooked artist.
One of the most often cited influences for many modern artists was, tragically, criminally underappreciated in his own time. Nick Drake's story is a depressing one, culminating in his suicide after releasing just three albums of mature folk music. Bryter Layter sits in the middle of this body of work, and is the most 'fleshed out' of his albums, in terms of instrumentation, featuring many of the musicians from fellow folk band Fairport Convention adding strings, saxophone and all sorts of other instruments that help to add to the texture of the album. Hardcore Nick Drake fans have listed this as one of the reasons for Bryter Layter being his weakest record; they prefer the more personal, stripped down sound of Five Leaves Left and, even moreso, Pink Moon, which features just Drake and his brilliant guitar work, as opposed to the depth of the sound found on Bryter Layter. But is it really fair to dismiss it on these grounds?
Based on the introductory track, which is a short instrumental that lays out some of the musical themes of the album in advance, it seems that the added instrumentation on here only benefits Drake's sound; lush strings lazily play out a repeating melody, and Drake's signature fingerpicking is still the primary focus in the dense mix, leaving both purists and newcomers happy. The first 'proper' track, Hazy Jane II, features electric guitar (surely eliciting some Dylanesque cries of 'Judas' from some fans at the time) and a big band style sound, which, once again, would do nothing to ease the fears of Drake purists. The track immediately showcases Drake's voice, which has been described as everything from 'gentlemanly' to 'effeminate.' I'd say it was definitely in the former camp, as he delivers his excellent lyrics with the kind of subtlety one doesn't often find in folk music.
The next track is album standout At The Chime Of A City Clock, which features the best lyrics on the album and, shock horror, more instruments than just guitar. A brilliant string line accompanies the eponymous chorus, and later on in the song saxophone fills help to complement the late night mood the song strives for, and quite brilliantly achieves. From then on, the album plods along with numbers of varying complexity and length, but what really sets Bryter Layter apart from Drake's other albums is the variety to be found in the sounds. Whether it's the gospel choir heard in the chorus of 'Poor Boy,' or the incredibly folksy and melancholy Northern Sky, there is simply far more variety on here than is even possible with just Drake and his guitar, regardless of how spellbinding and perfected that combination was by the time he released Pink Moon.
It's for this reason that I think Bryter Layter is the most underrated of Drake's holy trinity of releases. While purists won't be dissuaded from their instinctive dislike of the album, for a beginner it has by far the most going on, and for the typical music fan, forty minutes of pure singer songwriter music, however excellent it may be, might well be far more of a turnoff as a starting point than the more 'traditional' album found here. And if you want to be really pedantic, you could argue that the actual fingerpicking and vocal performance here is superior to Drake's other two releases, added instrumentation or no. And I'd say that they definitely were; Bryter Layter showcases Drake himself at his best, and injects some much-needed instrumentation as a backdrop for Drake's vocals and spellbinding guitar lines to bounce off of. Overall, a great album, but, whilst it's still my favourite Nick Drake album, I don't think he deserves quite the reverence some fans treat him with, even if this is a very good, not great, sophomore effort.
