NICK DRAKE – “Hazey Jane II” (from the album Bryter Later)
The sudden inflation of Nick Drake’s fame is deeply pleasing: sensitive and gorgeous, he makes a much better ambassador for British pop than Travis or bloody Toploader do. Better yet, despite his death and its unresolved circumstances, he’s not really attracted the coffin-chasing crowd, in part because while his music may be introspective it’s also endlessly pretty, like melancholy on a summer’s day (the skeletal Pink Moon excepted). Bryter Later turns down the strings a bit and occasionally wanders into TV-theme-land, but on the whole it’s Drake’s friendliest album, and “Hazey Jane II”, a typically roundabout and polite love song, has his best lyric, too: “If songs were lines in a conversation, the situation would be fine”. Hear that and render High Fidelity redundant.