Five Leaves Left

''Five Leaves Left'' is the debut studio album by English folk musician Nick Drake. Recorded between 1968 and 1969, it was released in 1969 by Island Records.

Recording

''Five Leaves Left'' was recorded between July 1968 and June 1969 at Sound Techniques in London, England. Engineer John Wood recalled that " rakewould track live, singing and playing along with the string section" without the use of any overdubbing. For the song "River Man", producer Joe Boyd described Drake playing on a stool in the centre of the studio while surrounded by a semi-circle of instruments. The studio's environment was also an important factor as it had multiple levels to it which enabled the creation of interesting sounds and atmospheres.

Among his various backing musicians, Drake was accompanied by Richard Thompson from Fairport Convention and Danny Thompson of Pentangle. Robert Kirby, a friend of Drake's from his youth, arranged the string instruments for several tracks while Harry Robinson arranged the strings for "River Man". The title of the album is a reference to the old Rizla cigarette papers packet, which used to contain a printed note near the end saying "Only five leaves left".

Critical reception

Reviews of the album in the months following its release were mixed. The brief review in '' Melody Maker'' discussed the origins of the album's title and added simply, "It sounds poetic and so does composer, singer and guitarist Nick Drake. His debut album for Island is interesting." Rating the album three out of four stars, ''Disc and Music Echo'' also described the album as "interesting" and said, "His guitar work is soft, gentle and tuneful; his voice highly attractive, husky and bluesy—but his songs uncertain and indirect." It concluded, "It's more a restful album than a stimulating one." In October 1969 Gordon Coxhill of the ''NME'' expressed his disappointment with the record, saying, "I'm sorry I can't be more enthusiastic because he obviously has a not inconsiderable amount of talent, but there is not nearly enough variety on this debut LP to make it entertaining. His voice reminds me very much of Peter Sarstedt, but his songs lack Sarstedt's penetration and arresting quality." A review the same month by Maurice Rosenbaum in ''The Daily Telegraph'' was more positive, describing the record as an "excellent LP of rake'sown songs", and observing, "His voice is slow, reflective and warm, and although the verse structure tends to melodic monotony, there is no mistaking the quality and the promise of 'River Man', 'The Thoughts of Mary Jane', 'Man in a Shed' and other items on this disc".

Until the 1990s Drake's albums had been critically and popularly ignored. By the 1990s, though, Drake and his work had begun to attract more attention. A 1989 retrospective assessment of ''Five Leaves Left'' by Len Brown in ''NME'' awarded the album 9/10 and stated that it "remains a masterpiece of English melancholy; a moving work that first revealed Drake's remarkable talent to communicate his fears of passing light and life, with simple beauty; his skill to charge listeners with emotions equal to his own". Including it in a 1999 list of twelve of "the best folk albums of all time", ''Q'' in 1999 called it "the pinnacle of a melancholy canon of work so distinctive that admirers can only speculate miserably on what might have been". A 2007 review by Chris Jones for the BBC
...