Made to Love Magic

Essential addition to your Nick Drake collection

     

As "odds and ends" collections go, this one is essential. Not only because Nick Drake released only three albums in his lifetime, but because the music within stands up to the quality of material you'll find on his others works. While this collection contains much from the now-out-of-print Time of No Reply collection, Magic, River Man, Mayfair, Three Hours, Time of No Reply, and Tow the Line are either new to this disc or the recordings are different.

The new recordings of Robert Kirby's original arrangements make for interesting additions to Magic and Time of No Reply. This works best for Magic, whose arrangement from the 1960s session with Richard Hewson just didn't fit the song. The arrangement for Time of No Reply, however, doesn't seem necessary (even if that's how the song was originally envisioned by Nick). The simple vocal and guitar version is still best...which can still be found on the Way to Blue compilation CD.

During the compilation of this CD, it was discovered that Nick had planned a fourth album in 1974 and that five of the tracks here were to make up Side 1 of that album: Rider on the Wheel, Hanging on a Star, Voices, Black Eyed Dog, and Tow the Line. So you essentially have Side 1 of Nick's last album here intact. Unfortunately, he never got around to recording Side 2.