B-Side Sunday.

Bounding out of your monitor like yet another pop-up Viagra ad (but with infinitely more engorged earnestness), It’s B-Side Sunday! The weekly ritual that won’t take your no for an answer and still toils ceaselessly to drag your weathered soul from the pits of sin to the apex of holy retribution. The bi-fortnightly formal that understands that it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness, and so brings forth loving bounties of pop for your spiritual salvation as you sit silently watching your life end one minute at a time.

The world is full of miserable sods and, luckily for us, most of them are songwriters. One such miserable sod who is more than a little special is Nick Drake, ambling into view with his laid-back stoner charm and the bambi-eyed brilliance of ‘Black Eyed Dog’ – a song so comfortingly confusing it’s like sitting in your favourite easychair and wondering whether you control your brain or your brain controls you, until you go cross-eyed and fall into a dribbily slumber. The aural equivalent of a mother’s hug on a cold day; it might sound essentially the same as everything else Drake released but, when the results are this good, it really doesn’t matter. Sure, Richard Dawkins and all the other godless cynics are already scribbling furious letters to Canned Applause pointing out that ‘Black Eyed Dog’ was not a B-Side but, like all religious ceremonies, B-Side Sunday hinges on a fair degree of hypocrisy and pointlessness. Besides, winter Sundays were made for Drake, and that’s good enough for us. Amen.