An acoustic guitar playing gently beyond the hedgerow (Ian MacDonald)

Peder Mørk Mønsted: Reflections of spring

To listen to Nick Drake is to step out of this world of pose and noise, and enter a quiet oak-panelled room, dappled with sunlight - a room opening, through French windows, into a lush garden, quiet because we're in the country, far from the sound of the city. It's summer, bees and birds are abroad in the shade, and, beyond the nearby trees, a soft tangle of voices and convivial laughter can be felt, along with the dipping of languid oars in the rushy river winding through cool woods and teeming meadows hereabouts: an English landscape with Gallic ghosts from Le Grand Meaulnes and La Maison de Claudine. And an acoustic guitar playing gently beyond the hedgerow in jazzy 5/4: River Man.

Ian MacDonald (in Exiled From Heaven: The Unheard Message of Nick Drake)