Not in my Airforce. On Mars album to truly surprise. I'm really wary about folk music. Most of the time, I find some longhair plinking on the acoustic guitar and warbling about nuclear war really boring. The only exceptions to this rule are Bob Dylan, whose lyrics are just too good to ever get dull, and Nick Drake.
Drake is a special case in a lot of ways.
Although musically and lyrically, he's not really that separate from any of the other late '60s British folkies, there's something intangible and momentous about his yearning, almost sighing delivery and unhurrying fingerpicked guitar. But once you get used to Drake's presentation, you find his simple irony of incredibly depressing lyrics and astonishingly beautiful songs addictive. Five Leaves isn't quite as gorgeous as Layter , nor as stirring as the almost entirely solo Pink Moon , but it does showcase the artist at his most vital and flexible, before depression and drug use sunk him and eventually killed him in 1974 at age 26. Most indie rock is quite detached from Drake's sparse arrangements, and the sound of Husker Du's raving, slashed electrics and Drake's mega-restrained acoustics are about as far as two guitar sounds can get. That's hard to explain.