Pink Moon - Nick Drake (1972)
Ideated From: A fun article on “essential winter albums” on Treble. Even though winter is almost over, I’ve cued them up for the next few days.
For me, the best solo singer/songwriter records are the ones that have a good structure to the songs. It’s a very personal and confessional and individual style of music, and so of course a lot of artists are going to ebb and flow to suit their own tastes, adding a verse if they think they need to or taking a break until they feel like launching the next chorus. But the ones I like the best tend to be the ones that are executed like there’s a backing track that only the performer can hear. They stay in time with the track in their head, and a band could join in if they wanted to and not stumble over the changes.
Pink Moon is that kind of record. It’s impeccably performed. It sounds fully orchestrated, even if the only instrument for the most part is the acoustic guitar. It’s incredibly intimate. Yearning and open, the lyrics and the delivery are both warm and chilling at the same time. Drake might not have been a guitar virtuoso, but he didn’t need to be: he had an excellent sense of how to get the most from his playing to suit the song.
I don’t know if this is just me, but sometimes when I hear something that really tickles the right parts of my brain, my scalp tingles. That’s usually something that happens on much more complex or surprising music than just a guy strumming a guitar. But all the same, that was my reaction to multiple tracks here. It really is an amazing record.
Tracks I liked:
Place To Be - Such a sad, touching lyric, even if you don’t know that he’d die very young just a few years after recording this.
Road - short and sweet, very meditative.
Things Behind The Sun - It seems like it’s setting up for a tension-and-release kind of dynamic, but it never really releases, and turns into more of a beautiful dirge
Parasite - A descending chord progression that hints at The Beatles’ Dear Prudence, but takes off for different places.
