After a 16-year hiatus and following years of chronic illness, Viarosa frontman Richard Neuberg returned in 2026 with The Vine, a stormy yet delicate solo album with shades of Nick Drake, Bill Callahan, Leonard Cohen, Scott Walker and Richard Hawley. An album crafted to explore both deep darkness yet lightened with rays of hope. Evocative, soothing, maybe some of the samples of soothing melancholy in this piece will open a door or two.
Richard now joins us for a Why I Love to explain where he finds inspiration in the music of Nick Drake.
DEVOTION
As a teenager, I was devoted to dozens of bands and artists, including some of the great singer-songwriters: Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen and David Bowie. But Nick Drake’s albums just weren’t being passed around during the 1980s, so I only came to him in my early twenties. When I first heard his music, I found it almost too painful to listen to, despite its obvious beauty. My sister had committed suicide when she was 20 (I was 19 at the time), and knowing that Nick Drake’s own life had been cut short by an overdose, following a period of suffering and psychological deterioration, brought his music too close to the unbearable loss that I was carrying.
From a young age, music of a melancholic strain had been a source of great solace — “a troubled cure for a troubled mind” as Drake puts it in the opening lines of Five Leaves Left. But when the trouble runs too deep, even a cure can feel like it’s digging further into the wound. Thankfully, as the years went on Drake’s music became something I turned towards rather than away from, as a tonic, a companion, and a kind of channel back to myself when feeling at sea.
A UNIQUE HARMONIC WORLD
I’ve never really been a great student of how another writer constructs their songs, and I’ve never tried to emulate another artist – songwriting has always been a way to find my own voice, not somebody else’s. But because Nick Drake’s music has affected me so much, it’s often pulled me in to thinking about its detail, and this has probably crept into my own writing at times. Each component of his music could be singled out as being exceptional in itself: the extraordinarily precise and inventive guitar playing; the originality and grace of the vocal phrasing and its delicate, honey-chested delivery; the elliptical but evocative lyrics that serve the melodies and atmospheres so perfectly. But it’s how all of these parts combine that makes his music so distinct. And they all exist within a unique harmonic world.
Songwriters and composers tend to have a harmonic signature, their own harmonic language, as if they receive and then communicate the world through a particular relationship of frequencies. That’s how I hear it anyway. Of course, this can evolve as an artist grows, but I think something of this identity remains constant across their work. Nick Drake’s harmonic language speaks to the heart so directly, yet is deceptively complex.
The sweetness and lightness of his vocal melodies draw us in, as if lowering our defences, but Drake’s voice often sits above a layered cluster of minor and major modes and tonalities. This movement between the minor and the major, between the dark and the light, creates a harmonic landscape that holds both melancholy and tender hope in the same space. Add to this his use of open tunings — which do just that, keep things open and unresolved — and the sense of yearning and tugging at the heart is heightened further.
RIVER MAN
River Man holds some of these tonal ambiguities, as well as rhythmic ones, with the vocal almost floating in its own time above the unusual 5/4 meter of the guitar. And the exquisite string arrangement expands the otherworldly atmosphere as it develops, with its shimmer and moments of countermelody. It’s an obvious track of his to choose, perhaps, and so much has been written about it already, but it’s simply a masterpiece that mesmerises me every time I hear it.
It’s sonically beautiful too, and in my time as a producer and mixing engineer, I’d often use it as a reference track, helping to guide my ears with its depth and warmth, while also reminding me of the alchemy of the recording process: this ethereal gift emerged from just four minutes of Drake in the same room as 14 string players, right there in a semicircle around him. Oh, and the great Danny Thompson overdubbed double bass too, adding some deep, woody thrum.
EVERYTHING DARK IS LIGHT
I’m not sure if I could ever feel comfortable putting one of my songs next to one of Nick Drake’s, let alone River Man, but here is Everything Dark Is Light from my album The Vine. The record was conceived as a kind of trinity of voice, guitar and strings, although other textures ended up playing a significant role too. My good friend Johnny Parry is my Robert Kirby (who arranged Drake’s strings and woodwinds), and he arranged the strings, horns and female backing vocals. Harmonically, this song isn’t as complex as a track like River Man, but I think Drake was in the back of my mind as I wrote it, how the lightness of a more major-inflected melody can help open up the melancholic heart of a song.
Equally, I’ve always been conscious of maintaining a certain space within both the melody and the lyric, to allow enough room for the emotion to be felt by the listener. Drake’s songs always offer this space, which I’m sure plays a big part in why so many connect so deeply with his music. Lyrically, his songs may not have the narrative range of those by Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen or Joni Mitchell, but I think there’s an emotional immediacy to them that is given even greater charge by the gentle power and poise of his voice.
DRAKE THE GUITARIST
When people talk about great guitarists from the rock and pop world, the same, primarily electric, players tend to come up — Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Dave Gilmore, Prince et cetera — with the acoustic greats largely ignored. Those who witnessed Nick Drake play were taken aback by his talent and ability, and while he was certainly as skilled as other folk contemporaries, like Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, I think he developed into a more original player, building beyond folk and blues and incorporating other styles like jazz and bossa nova.
When recording, Drake didn’t really need a second take, and this was all while singing and playing at the same time, with the opposing phrasing and rhythms that I’ve already mentioned. It’s the right/picking hand that often distinguishes the acoustic greats, and Drake was a master in this regard, with all five fingers playing an equal role, often in unique patterns, and with the thumb/base notes in cross-rhythm with the other four fingers.
This supreme dexterity and clean playing, along with the originality of his voicings and cluster chords, puts him right up there with the guitar greats as far as I’m concerned; he’s certainly given huge inspiration to me, together with Joni Mitchell, both of whom predominantly playing in open tunings, as I’ve always done too. If a musician can make their instrument speak in a way no-one else can, in an instantly recognisable way, then they play a significant role in the evolution of the instrument and its culture.
CELLO SONG
I remember the first time I heard Cello Song and being bowled over by its beauty and brilliance, anchored by the hypnotic roll of the guitar, unwavering in both its meter and its tone.
NORTHERN SKY
After the recording of his second album, Bryter Later, Drake expressed some reservations about its ‘presentation’. Following the disappointing sales of Five Leaves Left, quiet efforts were made to give the next release a more commercial edge. You can hear this in the production of Bryter Later, where some of the instrumentation does I think crowd the intimate draw of the voice and guitar. I still love the album though, with the sublime Northern Sky probably the highlight for me, one of the tracks where the arrangement helps the song to fully blossom. The opening line ‘I never felt magic crazy as this’ describes the experience of listening to Northern Sky pretty well, like being swept up in a celestial warmth.
While the song was still in demo form the producer Joe Boyd played it to John Cale, who happened to be visiting the studio. Upon hearing it, apparently Cale was seized by a vision of what he wanted to do with both Northern Sky and Fly, insisting that he visit Drake at his Hampstead flat immediately. I think Drake was a little taken aback at first, but he soon embraced the lush arrangement, and Cale’s piano, organ, and celeste really do give the track much of its crazy magic.
PINK MOON
The record I’ve probably spent most time with is Drake’s third and last album, Pink Moon. Musically it’s darker in tone, and there’s more of a sense of loss and foreboding to some of the lyrics, reflecting Drake’s growing distress and inner turmoil. But there’s something about the essence of it, the raw immediacy of just voice and guitar throughout (other than a simple piano line in the opening track) that has brought me back to this collection of songs time and again.
Although the recording of it may appear straightforward, John Wood’s masterful engineering gives the performances a perfect symmetry of intimacy and ambience. I always feel pretty emotional listening to the last track From The Morning. I love the song so much, but it can feel like a goodbye, which can sometimes tap into the well of my own losses. Some of the lyrics found their way onto Drake’s headstone: “Now we rise, and we are everywhere.” And thankfully, over time, his music has done just that.
THE LEGACY
Despite feeling that it was ‘terrible to think about it this way’, Joe Boyd once reflected that the lack of success during Drake’s lifetime may have given his catalogue a certain timelessness. And I’ve heard others talk of the ‘perfection’ of his limited output, as if it’s unsullied by future albums of lesser quality. But while there may be some truth to these rationales, I can’t help but feel the loss of so much potential. Drake’s understanding of music and song was unusually sophisticated for a man of such tender years – he recorded his three studio albums between the ages of 19 and 23 – and with more emotional stability he would surely have continued to evolve and break new ground.
To be an artist is to be sensitive. But without a robust ego supporting that sensitivity it can be hard to withstand the cut and thrust involved in selling one’s artistry. Sadly, Drake wasn’t blessed with much of a protective shell, and although there’s more to it than this, his sales no doubt suffered because of his increasing reluctance to play live and promote his releases. He’d always been a withdrawn performer, but as his mental health declined so did his willingness to play in public, until he just couldn’t do it any more.
When you think of contemporaries like Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Neil Young, and his friend John Martyn, their strong-headed, sometimes cantankerous and abrasive dispositions gave them a kind of armour that Drake simply did not have. And although they weren’t always keen to tour, they’ve all been resilient enough to spend much of their careers on the road.
AN INEVITABLY SAD EDGE
I know there’s a rather sad edge to this piece. And that probably says as much about me as the person I’m writing about. But it’s hard not to talk about Nick Drake the man when remembering his work, and what he endured in the final years of his life will always be part of his story. But there should be no apology for celebrating more sorrowful music, nor for finding ‘comfort in melancholy’ (as Joni Mitchell put it).
We need art that expresses all emotions, and there’s particular value in the expression of the more painful ones that so often go unspoken. The blues, after all, grew out of hardship and is the root of so much modern music, from jazz to rock to hip-hop. And in the folk and rock genres it’s no surprise that other artists like Elliott Smith, Adrianne Lenker and Radiohead are so valued — we need deeply felt voices like theirs to help us find our own.
BETTER WAYS TO MEND
My sister Anna had great talent, her gifts clear to everyone. I was thinking of my own journey when I wrote the song Better Ways To Mend, but I also had Anna in mind in the second verse: “You wanted to go back in time, to rescue the lark from its own song.” It’s not that I’m wishing away the essence of her or her gifts. It’s just an awareness that her talent was made of something delicate, and something that could be broken. I think about my sister every day, and listening to Nick Drake always reminds me that some of this world’s most beautiful things are fragile. We must cherish them.
Our thanks to Richard for taking the time to write so eloquently about his admiration for Nick Drake and the influence on some of the songs from The Vine.
You can read more from our extensive archive of Why I Love pieces from a wide array of artists on an even wider array of subjects, here.
Richard Neuberg: Website