The co-option of tragedy is a sad and seemingly inevitable fixture of our society. It's usually the most visible public figures who succumb first-- to political pathos, to the scrounging hands of big business-- but even the tiniest calamities are fair game when there's a profit to be made. Few will argue that Nick Drake's inconspicuous career didn't deserve some special recognition after the folk singer's untimely death in 1974, and special recognition is what it got: first in 1986 with the odds-and-sods mix Time of No Reply and expressly introductory Heaven in a Wild Flower: An Exploration of Nick Drake, then again in 1994 with an unneeded (but not necessarily unwelcome) best-of collection, Way to Blue: An Introduction to Nick Drake.
Ten years later, a third-wave of posthumous Drake paraphernalia has arrived: In June, Island Records issued Made to Love Magic, a piecemeal assemblage of unreleased material, and now the label brings us A Treasury, a revamped greatest hits compilation. Island is hoping recent high-profile discoveries of the man's music will move units the way his songcraft has long moved souls, but the whole act seems a bit redundant.
Drake's albums not only stand up well enough alone to render all the honorary drivel moot, they're as tight and succinct as any compilation could hope to be. And with only three records to his credit, neophytes don't exactly face a long and spotty recorded history to sift through for the goods. But-- let's be real-- who didn't see this coming: the ceremonial unveiling of a lost tomb of heretofore unheard tracks, followed by a sorely unneeded mix of career highlights.
The problem is that Drake's legacy is already well-worn ground. By this point, there are likely very few remaining newcomers who weren't already trounced by the deluges of 1986 and 1994 or wooed by the bard's Volkswagen spot. Of course, with an artist as fecund as Drake, the argument over which of his songs are "definitive" and warrant best-of inclusion is endless. No one is ever going to produce an introductory compilation as well-formed, as enigmatic, or as emotionally charged as any of Drake's studio efforts. Which is why A Treasury's failure is great, but understandable.
Unlike most acts of exploitation, this one is reasonably benign. Nearly every song on A Treasury is a show-stopper, and the track selection is fine, spotlighting Drake's weighty insights and limning the various complexions of his character. After "Introduction", the album really gets going with "Hazey Jane II", which is perhaps Drake's most upbeat-sounding song, though it's actually a claustrophobic damning of city life. "What will happen," Drake asks, over the baffling strain of gilt cool-jazz horns, "when in the morning, when the world, it gets so crowded that you can't look out your window in the morning?" The song is from Bryter Layter, Drake's second album, which coincided with the country lad's timorous arrival in London, and the buoyant orchestration is oddly foreboding of the subsequent rift between Drake, the city, and producer Joe Boyd.
The poignancy of the opening track is only outshone by "River Man", perhaps the dearest 5/4 love ballad ever crafted and the song most directly responsible for critics' and biographers' eager use of the words "sweeping" and "orchestral" in describing Drake's sound. Like "River Man", "Cello Song" is lifted from Five Leaves Left, and slyly incorporates the baroque instrumentation that marked that album without squelching Drake's lissome guitar playing and his velvety hummed inflections. On "Hazey Jane I", Drake's relationship with the bevy of studio musicians who accompanied him on Bryter Layter hits its excessive apex, but once again Drake shines: Amid a Morricone-esque swirl of overwrought strings and booming, tympanic drumming, Drake delivers one of his most distinctive guitar parts, a wily, galloping line that evokes the American West better than, well, most American artists. But first-timers would be better off hearing these songs in the context of their respective albums, where-- in close proximation to music written in similar moods-- they take on a different and richer hue.
Much is made of Drake's notorious depression, and rightly so. His emotional undulations certainly colored his work, and are keenly felt in songs like "Way to Blue" and "Northern Sky". But singer/songwriters-- few of whom offer any contest for Drake-- often make their living in the doldrums, and to conflate Drake's studiously honed skills with the putative inspiration of his personal struggles is melodramatic. The supernal emotion of Drake's songs is more a product of a fertile mind (Drake studied English at Fitzwilliams College in Cambridge) and a phenomenally inventive and versatile guitar style than a tortured soul.
That said, Drake fandom is an emotional investment, and thus far more subjective than one's typical grazing interest in less magnetic, less substantive, less tragic artistic personalities. Nick Cave is great, but he's still alive and still churning out albums, reconfiguring his legacy with every new catalogue entry. Drake never had the opportunity to sully (or bolster) his quaint, near-perfect canon. Many would argue that's a good thing, but instead the job falls to anthology-mongering record labels, whose interest in preserving the artist's legacy is secondary. However huge and malfeasant the failings of this collection, the depth of persona and enormity of talent still shines through, and it's going to take a heck of a lot worse than this to undercut Drake's memory.
