So here we are now standing at the grave / Trying so hard to best behave

September 25, 2013 10:13 PM

One day in February several years ago, William D. Drake – a distant cousin of famous folk musician Nick Drake – released two very different albums at once. There was Yew's Paw, a collection of strange and lovely piano music, such as the bouncy, joyful Pipistrelle, the sometimes-misty, sometimes-urgent At the End of the Harbour Wall. (Not to mention the aptly-named Short & Sweet Like A Donkey's Gallop, which is 17 satisfying seconds long.) Then there was Briny Hooves, a set of rock/folk/pop songs which are all confounding and fantastic. Wolves is an angry elegy that's nonetheless incredibly catchy; equally catchy is Serendipity Doodah. Ugly Fortress is a softer, Beatlesy sort of tune, The Fountains Smoke is a lovely folk duet, and Requiem for a Snail is exactly what it claims to be. Perhaps its two most affecting moments are Sweet Peace, a gently dark number that grows and grows, and Seahorse, which is very reminiscent of Robert Wyatt's (also wonderful) Rock Bottom. Both albums are worth a listen, and both can be streamed freely from Bandcamp—Yew's Paw, Briny Hooves, and Drake's more recent album The Rising of the Lights.
posted by Rory Marinich (11 comments total)

Me Fish Bring off The Rising of the Lights is absurdly gorgeous, too, but this post is overstuffed as-is.
posted by Rory Marinich at 10:18 PM on September 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

Thanks for posting this. Sounds right up my alley.
posted by misterbee at 1:47 AM on September 26, 2013

Three pips for Mr. W. D. Drake!

PIP! PIP! PIP!
posted by Homemade Interossiter at 3:23 AM on September 26, 2013

Ahoy hoy! If you like Mr. Drake the following Metafilter posts (one of them by ME! and the others by Mr. Marinich) are of interest.

Your Loyalty Demands
Fluffy coat
Foggy Sgt. Pepper?
posted by Homemade Interossiter at 3:30 AM on September 26, 2013 [1 favorite]

Wasn't he in some band called Cardiacs?
posted by SansPoint at 4:20 AM on September 26, 2013 [2 favorites]

And The Sea Nymphs (unreleased Peel session classic. Peel didn't like The Cardiacs, which makes this all the more plumptious).
posted by Devonian at 4:32 AM on September 26, 2013

Mr Drake has also worked with The North Sea Radio Orchestra - on this video he is merely a participant in the choir (along with other Cardiacs Kavus Torabi, Melanie Woods and Sharron Fortnam; Chief Cardiac TIM directed), though he has composed and played keyboards for them and his own group is also in the NSRO. Mostly I include the video here because it's loveliness and shares the same jumpy pastorality as Mr Drake's own compositions.
posted by Grangousier at 9:15 AM on September 26, 2013

What a talented family. Thanks for this, Rory Manrich!
posted by droplet at 9:26 AM on September 26, 2013

Lured in by description of music as "confounding," discovered I really liked it! Thanks, Rory!
posted by marginaliana at 9:56 AM on September 26, 2013

Good heavens, this is great stuff.

And also, Rory, your descriptions are quite good, whereas many people have trouble being specific & accurate when talking about music. Thank you for this!
posted by wenestvedt at 10:44 AM on September 26, 2013

Phew! I was worried it would just come off as a laundry list of adjectives.
posted by Rory Marinich at 11:00 AM on September 26, 2013