Review

The tight family bonds at the root of Nick Drake’s austere, impeccable jazz-folk style.
Family entertainment in the Drake household — an aged English manor called Far Leys — wasn’t exactly a night around the telly watching The Dean Martin Show. Maybe Mum would bust out one of her droll, downcast piano ditties: “Poor mum, poor mum,” she’d sing. “Pack up that last little yearning.” Maybe brother Nick and sister Gabrielle would duet on a bleak spiritual tune like “All My Trials”: “If religion were a thing that money could buy/ Then the rich would live and the poor would die,” they’d huskily harmonize. A rousing occasion might inspire a family rendition of Mozart’s “Kegelstatt” trio for clarinet, viola and piano.

Compiled by Gabrielle 34 years after her brother’s death from a prescription-drug overdose, Family Tree locates the tight family bonds at the root of Drake’s austere, impeccable jazz-folk style. Snippets of home recordings mingle with early versions of songs that ended up on his 1969 debut, Five Leaves Left; a half-dozen covers — Bob Dylan’s “Tomorrow Is a Long Time,” Bert Jansch’s “Strolling Down the Highway,” Dave Van Ronk’s “If You Leave Me” — show Drake trying out voices and perfecting his acoustic picking. Even with such limited audiences, he hardly relaxed: between-song banter amounts to nervous giggles and apologies for missed notes. But the previously-unissued “They’re Leaving Me Behind,” a statement of alienation from a world that “hurries on at its breakneck pace,” is an unimpeachable addition to his limited canon. Virtually unknown during his lifetime, Drake is now famous as an apparition. Family Tree serves as a gracious reminder that he was, once, flesh and blood.