If someone wanted to know what my dearest voice in music was three women would immediately come to mind: Billie Holiday, Joni Mitchell and the singer of the Cowboy Junkies. Margo Timmins would be it, I guess, as Billie Holiday is too far away, too classic somehow and Joni Mitchell has tainted her voice in my mind with all her bloated ego talk. Margo Timmins tender dreamy voice has got this warm embracing quality. If you asked a baby it would choose Margo to sing the lullaby. The softest, smoothest pillow to fall asleep on.

Lay It Down is my favourite Cowboy Junkies album. Margo's voice is on its apex and it is very well mixed into the foreground. All songs on Lay It Down are phantastic. It all flows majestically like a river flowing into a warm ocean. The atmosphere is as laid back as on The Trinity Session which a majority seems to consider their best but which lacks the tunes and the songwriting.

The Cowboy Junkies are a family enterprise from Toronto. Michael on guitar writes the songs, Peter is on drums, only the bass player, Alan Anton is not a member of the family. There is a cohesion in this band which must have to do with the family bounds. Other bands with similar strong ties come to mind. Yo La Tengo and Low, both couples and a bassist. They all make highly original, distinctive, timeless, atmospheric music.

Lay It Down is an album in the same vein as Velvet Underground's third self-titled. It is as spiritual without ever mentioning Jesus. Another record I'd compare this to is Mazzy Star's Tonight That I Might See. There is a psychedelic vibe, though it veers more towards the relaxed effect of dope than the almost aggressive weird colourful properties of LSD. Margo's voice is so much more expressive than the languid, sexy-too-sexy voice of Hope Sandoval.

The songs on Lay It Down are wistful but not depressive. My favourite is probably Speaking Confidentially which kind of interrupts the stream of slow, intense campfire songs for a grooving more lively rendition without being less touching. That string arrangement with the solo violin hitting the sky and the cello right behind is about the most perfect one in pop music this side of the arrangements on the first two Nick Drake records.

Here is the overview of the series 40 years, 40 albums of which part XXIV was this post.

Endlich mal ein Konzert bei dem ich nicht der Älteste im Publikum war, wahrscheinlich habe ich den Altersschnitt sogar gesenkt. Heinz Sauer, das Jazzurgestein am Saxophon, und Michael Wollny, der Jungspund am Klavier, die altersmäßig Großvater und Enkel sein könnten, harmonierten miteinander wie ein schon ewig eingespieltes Team. Die Stücke waren recht kurz, meist zwei bis fünf Minuten und hörten oft gerade dann plötzlich auf, wenn ich mich gerade reingehört hatte. Musik zum Abschweifenlassen der Gedanken. Recht freier impressionistischer und teilweise minimalistischer Jazz, der zu ECM passen würde. Virtuose Klavierpassagen, die z.T. sehr stark an Keith Jarrett erinnerten, Wollny nutzte den Innenteil des Flügels auch als Schlaginstrument, zupfte die Saiten und erzeugte quietschende bzw. scheppernde Klänge mit einem Glas, das er über die Saiten rieb bzw. auf sie stellte und dann die Tasten anschlug. Sauers ausdrucksstarkes Saxophonspiel changierte von sehr leisen, lyrischen Phrasen, die mich an einen Windhauch denken ließen, der durchs Schilf weht bis zu vollen, satten Sound-Eruptionen. Ein schöner Jazz-Abend, zu dem auch die mich durch ihr Understatement gelegentlich zum Lächeln bringenden Zwischenansagen des in seiner Sprödheit mir unglaublich sympathischen Sauer beitrugen. Die Duo-CD heißt Melancholia (Zeit-Rezension), nach einem kurzen Stück von Duke Ellington, das uns die beiden leider nicht darbieten konnten, da Sauer seine Noten verlegt hatte.

When relistening to Nick Drake's small precious œuvre in the last couple of days I realised I could never ever choose a favourite album by him (though I've done it here before). From the beginning on I have been exposed to the Fruit Tree box which includes all three studio albums plus the four songs recorded in 1974, a couple of months before his death. It has always been of one piece for me without any disposable song. As I let 1970 (Bryter Later) and 1972 (Pink Moon) slip by now I have to select the last remaining Nick Drake album.

Looking at the contenders it was easy to choose. Though there was also Velvet Underground's stunning double album 1969. Live with Lou Reed. One of the best live albums of all-time. Lou is very funny when introducing the songs and the over-all atmosphere is so relaxed. But Nick Drake engraved himself much more in my heart. One explanation was that I discovered him a long time before the Velvets.

That is not the main reason though. Five Leaves Left didn't change my life. It confirmed it. I had been an introspective and almost suicidal teenager already when I heard him for the first time in the winter of 1979/80. Listening to Nick Drake's soft tender voice singing lines like

didn't make things better. But they made them feel better. I had found a brother in soul who appropriately had overdosed in his mid-twenties on anti-depressants. There was an aura around him and additionally I seemed to be one of the few people knowing of his music. Outsiders are attracted by outsiders, that must be a psychological truth.

Five Leaves Left was his first studio album. Smokers of roll-ups will decipher the title easily. It alludes to the message printed on Rizla papers when only five papers are left in the box. A nice reminder to help the smoker not to run out of one of the two necessary parts to roll a cigarette. In retrospect I also read the title as Five Years Left as Nick Drake had only five years to live after the recording of the album. And he probably knew that his life was going to be very short.

There are more foreboding signs on this record. In Fruit Tree Nick Drake anticipates the lack of success he would have during his lifetime and suffer from:

For those who have no idea how this album sounds and who are still with me I can say that FLL is very eclectic and very original at the same time. It is a songwriter album by a guy who was a guitar virtuoso using alternate tunings (like Joni Mitchell and Sonic Youth). I would file FLL under chamber folk jazz. Some arrangements are almost classic with string sections. Danny Thompson's (Pentangle) bass is rather prominent on FLL and provides the jazz vibe. Richard Thompson (Fairport Convention) plays electric guitar on the first song Time Has Told Me and it makes me think of a pedal steel, there definitely is a country tinge to it. There is also congas on two songs (Three Hours and Cello Song) which adds a rhythmic world music ingredient. The most striking components are nevertheless Nick's singing and his perfect fluid play of the acoustic guitar. His voice is innocent and mature at the same time. If it doesn't touch you I can't imagine that you could ever be my friend. On the two subsequent albums he maybe reached higher highs (and lower lows) than here: the iceberg-melting instrumentals on Bryter Later and the heart-breaking personal confessions of someone who was living in his own world on Pink Moon. But on the pastoral FLL everything is there already. The deep, life-inherent melancholy and the ability to put it into song. I think Nick Drake's battery had run out of energy after the three studio albums. He had condensed his life into music, hardly anybody had listened to it and that overdose was a logical consequence. He had completed his life, there was nothing left to say.

Here is Cello Song. It is one of the less emotional and more universal songs on the album. Somewhere in between classical, world and guitar gem.

I like how Gabrielle Drake, Nick's sister, responds to the eternal question if it was suicide or not:

Further reading:

• The Nick Drake files (including discography, lyrics, news etc.)
• Long essay by Ian MacDonald on Nick Drake: Exiled From Heaven

Here is the overview of the series 40 years, 40 albums of which part XXIII was this post.

You know those pensioners who never have time for anything as they are so busy. That's how I feel right now. I am only on holiday though. And Catherine pushes me to work in the house and garden. Tomorrow it will all change, I hope. I have chosen my 1969 album about 25 years ago, no surprise there.

Endlich mal was Neues jenseits des langweiligen zweidimensionalen Puzzle-Genres. Simpel wie alle genialen Ideen.

Wedding Present spielen morgen im Nachtleben. Anyone interested to go? I'd like to but I need some extra motivation. If they would only play Seamonsters...