Shirley Collins - "Archangel Hill" (2023)

#NowPlaying #ShirleyCollins #BritishFolkMusic #vinyl #VinylRecords @vinylrecords

https://shirleycollins.bandcamp.com/album/archangel-hill

Shirley Collins - "Sweet England" (1959)

So nice to see this back in print.

#NowPlaying #ShirleyCollins #BritishFolkMusic #vinyl #VinylRecords @vinylrecords

https://youtu.be/OAPHj9Xf7i0

The Golden Glove (an upbeat English story-ballad, sing by Eddie Biggins)

https://makertube.net/w/8hmpnWSiJuVCmo9odnTUgr

Nick Drake Sings “Pink Moon”

Listen to this track by Tanworth-in-Arden poet laureate and singular English folk influencer Nick Drake. It’s “Pink Moon”, the title track on his third and final studio effort in 1972. The song was of a number that Drake wrote and recorded with a distinct vision for his next album in mind; stark and unadorned, and in direct contrast to the record that came before it. That record is 1971’s Bryter Layter; a lushly realized work of finely detailed folk-jazz that paired Nick Drake with a selection of top flight musicians that included Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Cale, Danny Thompson, and Doris Troy, among others.

With his musically minimalist vision for his new record leading the way, Nick Drake recorded the whole album as the sole performer during two late night sessions in late October of 1971 with engineer John Wood present to help him lay the songs down on tape. This one, the title track, contains the single overdub on the album, which is the sparkling piano phrase that embellishes Drake’s open-tuned acoustic guitar that, in his hands, sounds almost like two guitars intertwined.

The Pink Moon album is a short twenty-eight minutes and change, made up of eleven short songs that suggest themes of alienation, hope, and mortality. Nick Drake certainly wanted to communicate important ideas like these through the songs. On this cut and on the album that bears its name, he does this more effectively than he ever had before and in very unexpected ways, including the circumstances in which it was delivered to the label.

Nick Drake took it upon himself to embark on his next project to follow up Bryter Layter, calling up engineer John Wood himself to book the time to record. Drake’s label at the time, Island Records, weren’t even expecting a third record from him. This was until label press officer David Sandison met with Nick Drake at the label’s offices. After a brief meeting without much discussion about a new album, the songwriter left the tapes at the reception desk on his way out. They were adorned with the title Nick Drake Pink Moon. It was an unusual way to deliver a new record, especially one that the label didn’t even know was coming.

After Sandison and label head Chris Blackwell listened to a copy of the tapes, they found they had a new Nick Drake LP in the can and ready to sell. Despite the unusual circumstances in the album’s recording and its delivery, the label backed him up more than ever, doing their best to get it heard with full page ad marketing in the music papers being the primary strategies. They knew all too well by then that live performances, press junkets, and other face to face promotional activities were not really in Nick Drake’s wheelhouse.

But here’s what very much was.

Nick Drake was a superb writer and musician with a voice and authorial point of view to be compared to no one either at the time, or since. Here on “Pink Moon”, he more than proves the point. In just outside of two minutes, this song that’s concerned with a coming change suggests the spirit of country gospel blues while also evoking autumnal European landscapes and sensibilities at the same time.

With with an open-tuned strum, a hushed vocal, and a brief rainshower of a piano figure, Nick Drake said what he needed to say in the sparsest and most eloquent of terms in this nocturne of rising moons and great Biblical portent. In a kind of minimalist verse that says so much in so few lines, it is amazing in its impact.

“I saw it written and I saw it say
A pink moon is on its way
And none of you stand so tall
Pink moon gonna get you all

It’s a pink moon
It’s a pink moon.”

– “Pink Moon”, Nick Drake

It can be very easily argued that this song, and the record on which it’s featured, is the purest expression of himself as an artist that Nick Drake ever laid down on tape. Of his three records from a production perspective, this is the one over which he asserted most direct creative control. As stark as it may seem, it’s a genuinely fulsome recording that’s by no means as easily dismissed as being monochromatically bleak as lazy criticism has reductively tried to sell us.

With that in mind, “Pink Moon” is instead full of the lifeforce and is musically multidimensional, shimmering with vital energy even as it hints at heavier themes and overwhelming realities. It’s an eloquent example of how Nick Drake could present resonant ideas in distilled forms to make that much more room for listeners to explore, consider, and take into ourselves. The coming change he’s singing about is going to get us all. Is that cause for worry or excitement? Drake leaves it up to us to decide for ourselves which is the most true.

Despite efforts on everyone’s part, Pink Moon didn’t cut through the noise and sold poorly as a result on its release. This lack of momentum proved to be devastating, and all the more so for an artist like Nick Drake who wanted what any artist wants; to be heard and to make an impact with an audience by speaking from his own point of view, truth, and experience.

But there was another dimension to all this for him; that writing and recording music was relatively easy for Nick Drake. What was hard was relating to the world face to face and person to person. “If songs were lines in the conversation,” he said in another song, “the situation would be fine”. In an environment that seemed uninterested in this song and its namesake album on its release, it’s easy to imagine that Nick Drake took that very personally.

In 1999, a car commercial raised Nick Drake’s profile as a singer and writer and certainly boosted the sales of his music. Reframed in a new way and in a new era, “Pink Moon” became a hauntingly beautiful theme of mysterious origin. In the earliest age of the internet, word spread fast and without anyone having to do an interview or get up on stage for that to happen. It makes one wonder what might have been if Nick Drake had been born late enough to have his own YouTube channel, email subscription list, and Bandcamp presence, not to mention greater and more enlightened support to address his mental health issues to help him meet the world in a way that better suited him.

Regardless of any speculation on that score, Nick Drake ultimately achieved what he set out to do in any case. He connected to a wide audience and became understood as an artist and as a person with something unique to offer the world. That it took longer than was hoped is a great shame. He should have lived to enjoy it. Yet over that longer period of time, his music certainly had a great deal of influence on artists that followed him, with whole genres of indie musicians owing a great debt to the approach he laid down from Belle & Sebastian, to Kings of Convenience, to Shannon Lay, and beyond.

A lot of the time, an artist like Nick Drake who passes away too young without having experienced commercial success is thought of as a tragic figure too good for this world. It’s almost as though they had no agency or stake in the results when they were active. This is to say that the most important thing to recognize about Nick Drake beyond his singular and seemingly otherworldly talent is that he had a clear idea of who he was, what he wanted to say, and how he wanted to say it. His vision is understood more clearly now than it ever has been. But it was evident here on this song and on his final album all the while.

For more on the making of the Pink Moon album, check out this 2022 interview with John Wood, the engineer and de facto co-producer of Pink Moon. In it, Wood talks about how Nick Drake was very sure of what he wanted his record to sound like, among other important details about his approach as an engaged recording artist.

To get insights on Nick Drake and on his capacity as a dexterous, versatile, and inventive guitarist, this article about Pink Moon on guitar.com is certainly worth your time.

Enjoy!

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#70sMusic #BritishFolkMusic #NickDrake #singerSongwriters

REVIEW: Sometimes it’s as simply as having a great voice and playing guitar well. John Smith has a tried and true formula on The Living Kind: make your guitar mesmerizing and then sing with all your heart.

https://buff.ly/497oEp3

#Americana #FolkMusic #BritishFolk #BritishFolkMusic #AmericanaUK

This week we get a little weird with it! Check out great music from bedbug, Adrian Sutherland, The Shovel Dance Collective, Kara Jackson and Martha Groves Perry!

https://buff.ly/3VfC9zx

#Americana #CosmicCountry #Blues #FolkMusic #BritishFolkMusic

Can't wait to perform at #BroadstairsFolkWeek on Sunday 13th August - hope to see you there!
👇🏽
https://broadstairsfolkweek.org.uk/event/sunday-13th-afternoon-malcolm-mcwatt/

#folkmusic #folk #folkshow #livemusic #music #gigs #singersongwriter #acoustic #guitarist #singer #musician #scottishartist #americana #rootsmusic #celtic #britishfolkmusic #scottishfolkmusic #Broadstairs #celticmusic #scottish