What Time Has Told Me about Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left

Five Leaves Left was recorded at Sound Techniques, an eight-track studio constructed in a converted cowshed in Chelsea; the album was produced by Joe Boyd, and the engineer was the studio's co-owner John Wood. When Island Records released Nick Drake's debut album Five Leaves Left in September 1969, its impact then was negligible. The sessions for Five Leaves Left began in July 1968, but unusual for a debut album of the time it took the better part of a year to make the dreamy and languid sound of 'River Man' is soon undone by 'Three Hours', the title of which, Boyd has reflected, may refer to the travel time from London to Drake's college home in Cambridge. 'Fruit Tree' is one of the most beloved songs in the Drake canon, mainly because it seems to uncannily anticipate the indifference with which Drake's subsequent work would be met during his lifetime and his posthumous rediscovery and commercial canonization.