River Man is the second track on Five Leaves Left, by Nick Drake.
I don’t think I was especially blown away when I first heard it 24 years ago. I vaguely remember hearing a quiet discreet track, barely noticing the eerie violins edding in and out.
This track has now become one of the songs I quietly admire the most.
So, why, like reviewers at the time of release, did I not pick on the beauty of this track when first hearing it?
Perhaps it was because the song was neither folk, nor rock, nor jazz, nor classical, nor anything else I recognised. And yet, it is all at the same time.
It is a wonderful blend of different genres, a sort of modern classical song.

The song is adventurous yet completely subdued. It uses dissonant notes, yet not in any stricking way. Dissonance is just there to create tension and destabilise you.
To me, this tells me of how precarious life is. Because the River is the river of life, it sounds. The river, like life, is unpredictable, hazardous, painful at times, and yet we embrace it.
The River man stands a little like an Ancient Greek character would, all important and full of faults. He can tell you ‘how his river flows’, and you may confide in him. You may be unsure about it, but you will stay ‘for more’.
The odd time signature (5/4) enhances the unpredictably beautifully, as well as the violins remind you of how chilling and mysterious this scene is. And brief people’s lives are: ‘How they come and go’.

How elating it would have felt to be recording this, sitting with your guitar, surrounded by this extraordinary violin arrangement, with a rather formidable recording team who managed to capture this in such a way.