The Church Of Me: "If Scott Walker was the Dirk Bogarde of Brit (or honorary Brit) introspective troubadours - grandiloquent, immense, avant-garde - then Drake would be the James Fox; always apologising for breathing, so reticent that you feel that he perhaps would have been happier within a gated religious cult (as Fox later briefly was). But it's not quite accurate to assume that Drake's world is a blissful, asexual, even pre-sexual garden; in fact, if we take Barthes' identification of the 'grain' of a voice corresponding with its 'diction' - how the singer has assimilated the 'pheno-song' and 'geno-song' components, and how the singer renders them to the not necessarily passive listener - then Drake's voice is sometimes as carnal as hell. This is obviously more apparent on early things like his reading of Robin Frederick's 'Been Smoking Too Long' where his voice is surprisingly earthy, almost Hoagy Carmichael-ish; but take a real listen to his 1968 debut album, Five Leaves Left - hear particularly his Sinatra-derived habit of extending the final consonants/syllable of key words in his lyrics, sometimes with a barely suppressed growl; the 'love' in 'Time Has Told Me'; the 'time' in 'River Man'; even the 'slave' in 'Three Hours.' His natural baritone voice confirms that everything here is suggested/suggestive - Drake's voice is, more often than you might think, very sexy"