Bryter Layter is an album which Patrick Humphries describes as “a record of timeless tranquillity and unimpeachable atmosphere” in his book Nick Drake: The Biography. It is an album of solitude and despair which describes the isolation that Drake felt from the rest of society.
Hazey Jane II
Hazey Jane II highlights Drake's growing detachment. The first few lines are much longer than the rest of the song, crowded with questions of why other people are so busy and intruding and how this will impact others: “What will happen in the morning when the world it gets so crowded that you can’t look out the window in the morning?”
At the Chime of a City Clock
At the Chime of a City Clock shows a with-holding of the Self, “At the chime of a city clock / Put up your road block”. Here Drake is using physical barriers to portray mental ones. The “beads around your face” also suggest disguise. This theme of barriers is continued throughout the album, with the use of “fence” in both Hazey Jayne I and Fly.
Fly
Fly is a direct pleading with those that Drake felt he had nothing in common with; those who are not letting him cross their fences and understand their lives. He is asking to be let in “Please tell me your second name”, and for them to give away more of themselves instead of just hiding away and being complacent just sitting in the sunshine; “Come sit down on the fence in the sun”.
Poor Boy
Poor Boy is again an introspective view, Drake giving his listeners a view into his own insight of himself being the “Poor Boy”. There is nobody to care about his troubles “Nobody knows how cold it grows / And nobody sees how shaky my knees”. Again, “Nobody smiles if I cross their stiles”; the stiles are barriers that are there to be crossed into somewhere else, but nobody is willing to let him through.
The song says “Things I say / May seem stranger than Sunday / Changing to Monday” and this is a sign that he realises that what he says may seem bizarre to other people who see him as being different to themselves, and as with his other albums there is a reference to the cycles of the seasons with Sunday changing into Monday.
Tracks:
- Introduction
- Hazey Jane II
- At the Chime of a City Clock
- One of These Things First
- Hazey Jayne I
- Bryter Layter
- Fly
- Poor Boy
- Northern Sky
- Sunday
Bryter Layter is the second of Drake's albums, his first is Five Leaves Left released in 1969 and his final album Pink Moon was released in 1972.
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