Someone else I’ve been listening to much more since lockdown, weird. Only knew the leafy one until very recently. Was really surprised quite how much Bryter Layter sounds exactly like Belle and Sebastian or rather the other way around, of course.
Never really got the hype about him. Had a go with Five Leaves Left and Bryter Later, but they don’t do much for me. A few tracks I kinda like. Always thought he was pretty overrated. 2/5.
Nick Drake is super important to me, especially for Pink Moon. They really helped me through my teenage years, the first artist I really felt spoke to me when I discovered him. All the albums are essentially flawless (to my ears), but Pink Moon is something else. It’s half an hour of melancholic folk that is so hard to separate from the tragedy that came after, but it sounds timeless and ethereal. You realise just how good a guitar player he is. It contains my favourite song of all time, Things Behind the Sun, which is just…ahh. I am bad at describing music, but that song does so much for me. I’ll blabber more below in a spoiler bit below about that song and my love for it. But yeah, his albums are important to me.
CW: discussion of suicide, death
Things Behind the Sun is also important to me because a friend who sadly took his life when I was 19 recorded a version of this song. He was always trying to get it right, he was a gifted guitar player, and would practice this song endlessly to get the picking right. I am just taken back to his room and that time period of him perfecting this and it makes me happy to remember. I can just put that song and, despite the melancholy, smile at that image of him, means a lot.
Sorry for the long post, didn’t realise I would ever have so much to say for one of these, but clearly it was Nick Drake
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