WILLIAM D. DRAKE

Hi-Fi World - September 2008

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Subba-Cultcha - February 2007

Yew's Paw / Briny Hooves

One Time Cardiacs man offers up two albums of eclectic, classically influenced, piano based psychedelia.

William D Drake is a man out of time. He comes, beamed across time and space from an age of silver screens and revolution. A composer, songwriter and pianist who broods and confounds, twisting resonant falling key changes into evocative pastoral passages that surprise and confound in equal measure.

There are two records here, quite disparate but bound by common threads. Yew's Paw consists of thirteen solo piano pieces, a macabre soundtrack that draws forth a huge swell of foreboding and tempered power across its duration. Drawing on childhood obsessions with Disney, Spike Milligan and such leviathan's as Debussy and Rachmaninov Drake doesn't so much as cajole you into his world as lash you to a chair before saturating you in bombardment of chopping time signatures and discordant key changes that stretch simultaneously across a myriad of emotions. The title track clearly sets out the stylistic stall, hitting the ground running and recalling the identity that permeated Drake's time as a Cardiac. Title's such as 'Within My Skull' providing the perfect signpost to this records origins, Blake has poured the dark contents of his conscious down through his fingers and into the very grain of his piano. It is a stark, biting collection recalling variously the classical heavy weights, later day jazz visionaries, and yet it is laced with a noir reminiscient of the modern songbook of artists such as E or Nick Cave.

By contrast Briny Hooves is a record of aching immediacy. From the off Drake employs much of the stylistic fervor evident on Yew's Paw to embellish his songs with an infectious intent. 'Lightening strikes but once they say. it was everyday', he sings across opening track 'Wolves', and he has a point, because across the eleven songs lightening strikes with alarming frequency. Quite simply breathtaking in its impassioned delivery Drake incants Cohen-esque narratives across stark choral arrangements that sweep and rise like the lost moments of a Dennis Wilson fantasy.

Yet, for all his passion it is still when simply using melody as his voice that Drake truly creates transcendent music, and where Briny Hooves lets you glimpse, such as during the stand out 'SeaHorse', Yew's Paw is the sound of a man delivered.

By Jonathan Sebire

Vanity Project February 2007

Briny Hooves (She Bear) / Yew’s Paw (Onomatopoeia)

Two simultaneous album releases from the former Cardiac and classy, but psychedelic, composer William D. Drake, an early-music mangler with an ear for the absurd, the profound and the pop. ‘Briny Hooves’ begins with the chewy rhythm of ‘Wolves’, and after the snakes-and-ladders to-top-and-drop melodies which are Drake’s signature open ‘Dark Ecstasies’ he can easily merge into a fairly mainstream rock-opera piano style. ‘Ugly Fortress’, meanwhile, is da-da for the parlour. ‘The Fountains Smoke’ twinkles amongst heavy bass piano and workhouse/fog brass. The centerpieces here though is the divine, church-bells-in-misty-dissolve ‘Sweet Peace’ as well as the emotive, euloguous trumpet-led ‘Seahorse’. On ‘Yew’s Paw’, Drake’s skills as an instrumental composer are brought to the fore, with 13 piano-only pieces. His typical time and key changes are here but utilized in a much more genteel way perhaps than in his past musical lives. That said, when ‘Sylvie’s Proof’ changes from a stroll to a scamper in an instant, he shows that he can still play around with a listener’s, hitherto seemingly passive, adrenaline.

Skif.

Playlouder.com - February 2007

Briny Hooves / Yew's Paw

When I found out that William D Drake was to release two albums on two different labels on the same day I couldn't contain a chuckle. Nowadays an album isn't released unless it's been squeezed through the marketing mangle for months with everyone down to the record company bike courier chucking in his or her opinion on whether or not the bass is high enough in the mix or whether the first single should be 'Mummy's Boy' or 'Bedwetter'. We'd be lucky (or not) to be able to buy two albums every three years or more from the same artist but Mr Drake is bursting with tunes and his hand will not be stayed.

'Briny Hooves', released through sheBear records, is superabundant in ideas and scope. Like a proggy High Llamas performing with the North Sea Radio Orchestra (who he also plays with), and with Drake's wonderful piano always at the centre, it paints a colourful picture of the inside of his originative and fertile mind. It doesn't really fit into any drawer in any musical chest that I could name; it being neither indie nor rock and yet it has elements of both as well as sea shanties, hurdy gurdy rhythms and even a 'Requiem for a Snail' which, unlike its subject, is an overwrought prog epic, lasting barely a minute and a half.

'Seahorse' is a colossal sweep of a tune which turns into 'Nights in White Satin' halfway through for some reason, 'Wolves' highlights William's vocal range, from husk to strangled roar, the music stomping for a bit before collapsing into sweet strings, brass and farmyard animals. 'Serendipity Doodah' begins with a deranged cartoon piano before bouncing into a beefy pop song with a big chorus. "We shall sing the seashell song/it won't be short, it won't be long", so goes 'The Seashell Song', a lovely medieval folk gander across the beach at Monk Nash. 'Briny Hooves' is perfect for this time of year, all wintry and cosy; like being in a warm kitchen while the wind and rain batter the garden outside.

'Yew's Paw' is an album of Drake's piano instrumentals released by Onomatopoeia records. Some Yew trees in England are thought to be over four thousand years old and are seen by some as symbol of transformation and rebirth due to their ability to grow new trunks within the old. This fits with Drake's musical vision which belongs to no particular place in time. 'Yew's Paw', the first track, veers from classical flourishes to keystone cops to Gershwinesque flights of brilliance. It will require some effort, something that current generations, including my own, may have lost since the pop single was invented fifty years ago. To our superfast consumer ears, music like this can appear noodly but William Drake is an excellent piano player and his fingers are remarkably fluent in their chosen language; small wonder as Drake has been playing nearly all of his life.

'Short and Sweet Like a Donkey's Gallop' sounds like a sixteen second driving theme from a seventies period drama, 'Within My Skull' switches rhythm and time with a fluid grace and 'The Kissing Song' charts the ups and downs of a love affair, and is unutterably lovely. Lie back, close your eyes and direct your own film in your head, the music is already done. I would be hard pressed to choose which of these albums to buy if I only had enough conkers for one, but both would reward in their own unique and imaginative way.

Domino Jones

The Guardian – 2 February 2007

Briny Hooves, 3/5

As the Great Tao of Style spins round, it is possible for culture to be so retro that it sounds fresh - and vice versa: witness the craft revival, ballroom dancing and the return of the seven-inch single. As backward-glancing composer-performers go, William D Drake is more Afghan coat than legwarmer. Briny Hooves is cheerfully eclectic, with a nod to "big pop" - the High Llamas, the Associates, late Beatles - and a raw edge to the vocals.

He has even been compared to Brian Wilson, perhaps for his quirky, acoustic orchestrations, but there is something defiantly British in Drake's attitude. His sense of scale and structure chime with his apprenticeship in the Cardiacs and his ongoing contributions to the North Sea Radio Orchestra. You can also hear Drake's pastoral roots in Yew's Paw (on Onomatopoeia), a simultaneously released collection of piano miniatures whose "light classical" veneer peels back to reveal a tough musical heart.

John L Walters

Rocksound – February 2007

7/10

Two very separate solo albums by a onetime member of the Cardiacs, a band appreciated by few outside a furiously devoted fan base and habitually described as "very English". Drake appears to be in no hurry to alter this impression on 'Briny Hooves'; that his old band were one of the biggest influences on the tea-sipping pop grandstanding of Blur comes to light on (painful pun alert!) 'Serendipity Doodah' – brassy prog-goes-pop springing above the glut of muted psych numbers and queerly arranged piano rattlers. More fun than this all sounds, actually. 'Yew's Paw', meanwhile, is a collections of 13 piano pieces, at once sinister and elegant; the sonic equivalent of an unearthed, scratchy film of 1920s upper-class social gatherings. That's more fun than it sounds, too.

Noel F Gardner

The Leeds Guide - Issue 162 - Wed 24 Jan - Thu 08 Feb 2007

William D Drake - Briny Hooves (SheBear Records) / Yew's Paw (Onomatopoeia Records)
**** (four stars)

A brave or foolish move for William D Drake and his two record labels; releasing two very different records on the same day could be the work of a genius or a mad man. Which is roughly the picture Briny Hooves paints of it's composer. Drake's work throughout his more 'song-based' album permanently verges on the preposterous, veering between lushly orchestrated folk and ludicrous psychadelia, combining sounds and ideas which, by all rights, should never even walk past each other, eyes averted, let alone sit happily hand-in-hand on record.

But the sign of a talented and unique song-writer is when the ridiculous becomes emotionally stirring, rather than laughable, and Briny Hooves achieves the former.

And then, there's album number two, Yew's Paw, a collection of thirteen solo piano pieces, twisting time signatures and keys at whim, making each mesmeric composition an intriguing, ever-shifting piece of work.

Tom Goodhand