Nick Drake
Bryter Layter

Bryter is certainly not the best album by Nick Drake, but it still gets five stars. And it doesn’t matter (one) if out of ten tracks, three are rather bland instrumentals and two don't say much at all. And it doesn’t matter (two) if another three songs are disturbed by a changing and continuous interference of pompous strings and almost jazz saxophones whose name, if you don't mind, is out of place. And it doesn’t matter (three) if a strange kind of almost pop and almost lively colors, in a somewhat improper way, Nick’s formidable words about loneliness, identity, despair, almost as if old Robert Johnson had ended up at the amusement park selling cotton candy. And it doesn’t matter (four) if in conclusion, doing a quick count (three plus two plus three) we've reached eight. Also because, with ten tracks, it means there are at least two masterpieces. Too little for five stars? Oh no, not at all. (And why?)

(Because) this is one of those rare cases where the whole exceeds the sum of its parts. And listened to from beginning to end, Bryter somehow flows and passes. Especially if you relax a bit and forget some hard and proud rules you've set for yourself, like no strings, no orchestrations. Not easy if you come from Pink Moon, your first Nick. Not easy the first time and not easy even today. That sometimes amazement still strikes me, although it then passes.

But let's go in order, after the short and delicate instrumental “Introduction”, “Hazey Jane II” starts and it’s a burst, as if the lights suddenly came on in the dead of night, with Nick singing very fast and barely keeping up with the rhythm, quite unusual for him, of this strange little pop song. And, almost in a state of apnea, he mentally revisits the images of the nightmare from which he just woke up: “the sharp-toothed weasel that bites you in the evening” when you’re disheartened and the mortal anguish of the morning when “you can’t” even “look out the window”. Then the voice finally becomes reassuring..."hey take a little"...take your time"..."let your brother grow his hair, redo your makeup, let's start again..." "take a moment to shine a light on your story..." And Nick, starting out quickly, late in the music, now orientates himself in that music and has found home...and looks like someone who can finally breathe. Even if, sure, as he wonderfully says, “if songs were speeches the situation would improve”. And since they're not, it doesn't improve at all.

Then comes “At the Chime of the City Clock”, and the beginning is one that strikes you and takes no prisoners, so mysterious, so evocative, with that voice coming in with a slight tremor, emphasizing the word freeze, the cold of the frozen city... ah. this song moves me so much!!!. Yes, it's cold and you have to kneel, but then, what the hell, no, go for a ride, saddle up, go here, go there, hold high your crown, that a pebble is your wealth even if you’ve lost your armor...everyone sees you as strange...that the stars don't shine so much because of how bad you are...that it's tough being a medieval knight in London in 1969. Then I have to tell you how I listen to this song in the car, the car moves, the music too. Add it to some country roads, add a certain light, add that you feel like singing. So, with chime I reach a certain point, then I go back, reach when it says “the games you play make people say you’re either weird or lonely” I finish the verse and then start over again. And why, you might ask? It's because I'm also a guy whose games make people say I'm alone and strange, it's that, that, but not just that, it's also that it's beautiful how it arrives there: it's as if that little phrase sums up all the words said before and even those to come after. And then I like to sing it...and sing it again...and go back, as I told you...and I need stuff to get to the end. Yes, stuff and, every now and then, a bit of dismay, for those saxophones and violins, which is still that old out-of-place story.

“One of These Things First” is a perfect song, maybe too much. And so the secret is not to notice it, letting yourself be carried away by that flow, caressing and benign, of incredible lightness. Because if you exit the flow and listen to the individual parts (the lively piano, the perfect rhythms, Nick’s guitar), then note all the flutter where those parts meet in mid-air, maybe everything will seem too baroque and too clean, too perfect. No, really, if you've stepped out, get back in the flow. And, indeed, turn up the volume. And start floating in the room, do it, even if there's a zero point one of melancholy. Indeed, especially because there's a zero point one of melancholy, inevitable if the voice and words are those of Nick Drake. Who here talks about the impossibility of being, as well as what could have been and wasn't. “I could have been” he says. “I have could been” this, “I have could been that”. “I could have been a sailor, a cook, a book, a clock, your support, your door, a whistle, a flute, a boot, I could have been yours, I could have stayed longer” etc., etc., etc...and it’s funny this mix of inanimate objects, roles, situations, it too in its own way a kind of flow, which suits this lively autumnal flow very well. Only then does Nick say: “I could have been all these things before”...only to add, in an almost chilling way: “and I could be...here and now...I would be, I should be, but how?”... (“I could be here and now, I would be, I should be, but how?”). But how?...yes, how? And then that music, our lively flowing, is the flow containing all those possibilities, distant zero point one from Nick’s voice and his honey whisper...but it doesn't matter, I float in the room...and raise the volume...that I'm also distant...and that “but how?” I leave it to the sweetness of a piano that wanders in a mousetrap.

“Hazey Jane I” and the instrumental “Bryter Layter”, though perfectly fitting the mood of the album, are so, so.

“Fly” no, “Fly” is not so, so. Here Nick doubles up and begins by choking his so perfect voice and invoking a second grace, to free himself from the mask, indeed from masks. Then the voice returns to honey and becomes of overwhelming serenity: “sit on the fence” and it doesn’t matter if you can’t “fly”, go on sit down, it doesn’t matter, really. As good old Robyn said? “An artist might want to sing precisely those words, or maybe they sing their feeling, the important thing is that they come out well from the mouth”. And of course, here they come out well, and the feeling with that two-voice trick comes out even better. But in the end, what I want to say is that the first voice cries and the second embraces. Ah, John Cale is arranging here and you can tell. But I am almost more attached to the version from the posthumous and wonderful “Time of No Reply”, especially for that sweet guitar finale, intense...frayed...trembling...because the guitar between those two voices doesn’t know which to choose.

“Poor Boy” is cute, but really has nothing to do with Nick. The funny thing is that his mom, who also loved composing songs, will respond with Poor Mum (you can listen to it in the home recordings, the extraordinary sketchbooks of Drake).

Almost at the end comes “Northern Sky”, with those words that speak of “crazy magic”, of “emotion in the palm of the hand”, and that so bluesy reference to a past when one was exhausted and wandering was pointless...that gentle melody and those sounds bright and restrained at once, sun and clouds, magic and blues in the alchemical/musical mortar and the usual voice of honey invoking... A song full of hopes, but which does not neglect the subtle cracks, the too-tight shoes of the dream traveler. A song with a complex arrangement, a chamber blues in a way. It lacks the magic of the supernatural voice/guitar relationship, yet everything holds together and the complex architecture, for once, manages to add without taking anything away, thus satisfying the sublime aesthetes of the sensation economy. The most exciting moment is that transition from ecstasy to the evocation of sadness, the subtle cracks we mentioned...with a piano that goes directly to heaven to sweep away the clouds, allowing the clouds to transform into words. Here too John Cale is arranging and you can tell.

Only time remains for another harmless instrumental, the rest of the warrior. Or of the poet.

In conclusion, Bryter is overproduced and Nick's voice is often suffocated and, with the exception of Fly, Northern Sky, Chime of the City Clock does not have the incredible depth and distance of the first album, where remoteness becomes intimacy. It does not have the disconnection of Pink Moon and the final songs that will end up in Time of No Reply. And this perhaps is the greatest sin. But...

But there’s like a flow, a kind of false spring, an illusion. As if there were still two voices, the heartrending one of words, and the, all things considered, unforgettable one of music that flies, perhaps just making a little effort.