Nick Drake: Dreaming England

Description

Since his untimely death in 1974 at the age of 26, singer-songwriter Nick Drake has not only gained a huge international audience, which eluded him during his lifetime, but has come to represent the epitome of English Romanticism. Drake's small but much-loved body of work has led to comparisons with Blake, Keats, Vaughan Williams and Delius, placing him within a long line of English mystical Romantics. Yet on closer inspection Drake's work betrays a myriad of international, cosmopolitan influences and approaches that seem to confound his status as the archetypal English troubadour.

Nathan Wiseman-Trowse is Senior Lecturer in Popular Culture at the University of Northampton. He has published work on the performance of class in British popular music, the music and writing of Nick Cave and the graphic novels of Alan Moore.

"Wiseman-Trowse analyses what [Nick Drake's] Englishness consists of: the sense of wistfulness and melancholy, the strain of romanticism, and the pastoral landscapes evoked by his melodies and lyrics, as well as the solitary, contemplative images of Drake used for album covers and publicity shots. . . . It's an astute analysis, and an evocative reminder of the handful (fewer than 40) of beautiful, delicate songs Drake left us."-- "Independent on Sunday"