Bryter Layter

Nick Drake’s second studio album is broadly similar in sound and outlook to his first, Five Leaves Left. It also assembled many of the same musicians, and John Kirby as arranger, whose string and occasionally woodwind scores have become indelibly associated with Drake for most listeners. Notably, as well as some of the most characteristic of Drake’s songs, there are the somewhat soul-gospel-like ‘Poor Boy’ among the track listing on Bryter Layter, and a handful of instrumental tracks which wrap orchestrated melodies around Drake’s trademark elaborate fingerpicking guitar accompaniment. The latter have proved controversial among fans, variously called ‘lift music’ or considered signs of a radical experimentalism. A lot may depend on the debated question of whether Drake or Kirby wrote the melodies used (as opposed to the arrangements of them).

Bryter Layter has been called Drake’s happiest album. Much was to change, emotionally and musically, with his next and last completed record, Pink Moon.