Online review by Incendiary MagWhile we are all aware of just how far-reaching Nick Drake’s posthumous influence has been, it remains shocking and saddening to see, 30 years on, just how many people will gladly pay nearly 30 quid to hear people even just covering his songs. Tonight, The Dome is rammed – a capacity crowd of more than 3000.
The fact is that without the blessings of those originally involved, these increasingly popular nostalgic revisitings of old works (including the Don’t look Back series and, of course, countless hideous musicals written around bands’ back-catalogues) simply fail. Curated and introduced by Joe Boyd (he of White Bicycles fame), right from the start the evening has an air of authority and authenticity, affirmed by the prescence of Danny Thompson (who played on sessions with Nick) on double bass, an all-star (kind of) cast of singers, and Robert Kirby’s original string arrangements (it’s worth noting that Kirby was 21 when drafted in to arrange Five Leaves Left).
The choice of singers is, for the most part, similarly spot-on. Green Gartside (of Scritti Politti) is perhaps an odd choice, but his high, unwavering voice cuts through just right, with even hints of his own bands’ slick American R’n’B stylings. Robyn Hitchcock is his usual dry, surreal self, and has me and my friend in tears when, having already sung a couple of tunes, picks up a guitar with polka dots that match his shirt perfectly. In the intermission it dawns on me that Nick Drake is one of those artists (much like The Fall) whose songs are extremely hard to reinterpret without sounding like flat emulation, or rather that when a song is played and sung exactly as he did, it is impossible not to simply wish to hear the original recording itself. Tonight Scott Mathews, Vashti Bunyan, Teddy Thompson and Lisa Hannigan are all well and good (the latter leading a particularly rousing Black Dog), but it’s relative newcomer Krystle Warren who brings the house down with an intense, jazzy take on Time Has Told Me. I’d not heard of her before this evening, but her performance literally stole the show. Likewise, Robyn Hitchcock and Green Gartside make no point of tempering their own, unique voices to ‘suit’ the songs, and are all the more affecting for it.
Predictably, the main set ends with a straight take on Pink Moon (with Cor Anglais in the piano solo….why?). While I can’t fault the musical direction, or the mix (perfect throughout), we all know the records, and I couldn’t help wishing for something completely bonkers to offset all the reverence. Still, a fitting tribute to both Nick Drake and Robert Kirby. May people still be digging those record in another 30 years!!
Online review by The GuardianPosthumous leaps in popularity come no more dramatic than that experienced by Nick Drake. During his brief recording career, he would have struggled to draw enough fans to fill the Brighton Dome's gents. Today, demand to hear his music played live is vast and undented by the theoretically insurmountable issue of his having been dead for the last 36 years. There are touring tribute shows and orchestral concerts, but the most impres-sive solution is Way to Blue, devised by Drake's producer and mentor Joe Boyd.
The danger is that the musicians assembled will be overly reverential in their approach to Drake's music, which, ironically enough, feels slightly dulled by its ubiquity these days. But the appearance of Robyn Hitchcock immediately assuages such fears. Mugging away as if pulling faces is about to be banned under an EU directive, he rather overplays the lovable English eccentric card, but he unexpectedly decorates Parasite with effects-drenched, feedback-laden psychedelic guitar to astonishing effect.
Some songs prove resistant to reinterpretation: Neill MacColl does his best with Drake's best-known song, Northern Sky, but the original, from 1970's Bryter Layter, is so perfectly written and executed as to be hermetically sealed: there's no way in. Others give themselves up more easily. As Joe Boyd notes in the programme, Green Gartside of Scritti Politti might seem an unlikely choice to pay homage to Drake, but his plaintive voice fits the material perfectly: his version of Fruit Tree is spellbinding.
Black-Eyed Dog, a harrowing, death-haunted shriek from Drake's final 1974 studio session should theoretically be the short straw covers-wise, not least because it's the kind of thing you don't really want to be subjected to very often. That makes Lisa Hannigan's cover all the more impressive: playing the harmonium and stamping her feet as rhythm, she draws out something weirdly rousing from a song that previously seemed the apotheosis of abjection and defeat.
Krystle Warren's voice reworks Time Has Told Me as grippingly raw, gospel-influenced Southern soul, a transformation so complete it even seems to surprise her fellow performers. "Yeah, well," mutters Teddy Thompson, charged with the unenviable task of following Warren on stage, "I could have done that." Elsewhere, legendary Pentangle bassist and folk sessioneer Danny Thompson, who performed on Drake's albums, plays a bass solo, thereby proving that he is perhaps the only man in rock who can play a bass solo without instilling in you a pressing desire to wrap his bass around his neck.
At the gig's end, the performers assemble for an ensemble version of Voice from the Mountain, another song from Drake's final session that sees its downcast mien recast as something joyous and celebratory. Listening to it, it's hard not to conclude that even Drake himself – by all accounts, alas, not one of life's happy-go-lucky sunbeams – might actually have enjoyed himself here.