And now we rise / And we are everywhere.

Finding certain musicians, like finding certain friends, happens with a sense of arrival. As though you have been practicing for it, the meeting is seamless and instinctive. Maybe it’s the timing that’s right: before would have been to early, later too late, but now is perfect though you can’t quite explain why or even feel like you need to.

All this to say, last night I listened to Nick Drake for the first time. Recorded in two nights, the eleven tracks of Pink Moon last less than a half hour and, with the exception of one piano overdub, has only voice and guitar. It was his third and final released album before an overdose of antidepressants ended his life three years later. Another album, Five Leaves Left is likewise hauntingly world-weary, with bluesy melodies.

Drake’s voice in Pink Moon is weighed with the despair that plagued the final years of his life, while “The Thoughts of Mary Jane” is a lighthearted wondering what a girl is thinking. There is something right about the bareness of emotion. Simplicity is welcoming in a way nothing else can be, like coming home before you learned you need to leave.

Time has told me
You're a rare rare find
A troubled cure
For a troubled mind

And time has told me
Not to ask for more
Someday our ocean
Will find its shore

-from "Time Has Told Me"