Enlisting Gabrielle Drake, The Unthanks provide the perfect outlet for Molly Drakes’ songs and poems. An unassuming yet transcendent album.
Molly Drake is perhaps best known as the mother of Nick Drake, the uniquely talented, famously fragile and ill-fated songwriter whose three albums attained a status that quickly grew from cult to classic after his death in 1974. But what is less well-known is that Molly was a prolific songwriter and poet in her own right, at a time when that sort of thing was considered a pastime rather than a valid vocation for women. She was born in Rangoon in 1915 and spent much of her life abroad – much of her life’s path was dictated by British colonial activity in South Asia. In 1944, four years before Nick was born, Molly gave birth to a girl, Gabrielle. [ . . . ]
Source: The Unthanks – Diversions, Vol. 4: The Songs and Poems of Molly Drake