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If you listen to melancholy music, much as I tend to at times, the artists you love probably love Nick Drake. Drake was a 70s folk singer/songwriter who was struck with debilitating depression.
His own sister reports the recording of his first album, "Five Leaves Left," like this: "He was very secretive. I knew he was making an album but I didn't know what stage of completion it was at until he walked into my room and said, 'There you are.' He threw it onto the bed and walked out!"
So yeah, kind of a weirdo. The uncomfortably shy, depressed kind of person that you don't even like to be around because they make you feel weird.
Drake recorded three albums during his life, then grew increasingly awkward and antisocial before overdosing on antidepressants and killing himself in 1974. He'd recorded four songs for a fourth album, but Drake had deteriorated so much by that point he couldn't sing or play the guitar well...so in this belated album review, we'll take a look at the last album he recorded while still in control of his faculties, 1972's "Pink Moon."
This album is stark, with just one overdubbed piano track atop Drakes singing and guitar. This is the one Drake and the record company thought was gonna be huge, and its failure to find a wide audience in part led to the breakdown that Drake never recovered from.
Like so many artists who never found an audience during their lifetime, though, Drake (and especially the "Pink Moon" album) has grown into legend. I think there's a definite upside to suicide for artists: the audience is forced to say "Wow...he really meant that shit. Damn."
So are the accolades for this album warranted? Let's have a look.
The first track, "Pink Moon," is easily the best on the album. Hell, you'll probably even recognize it from that Volkswagen commercial from 2000. This is the song where his atonal voice is haunting, and it's such a short song that you really can't tire of it. Drake's magnum opus, to be sure.
"Place to Be," the second track, has this cool insurgent guitar effect achieved through slides and hammer-ons...and boy oh boy, read the lyrics. That's depression, right there. It's a nice track. Drake's enunciation could've maybe used some work...he's tougher to understand than Kurt Cobain, which is some kind of feat. A well-known biography about Drake takes a line from this song. I'll let you figure it out if you're interested. That makes this blog enigmatic and mysterious.
I don't really like the third track, "Road." I hate how his voice matches the guitar note-for-note during the refrain. It sounds like a kid's song, and is as monotonous as anything Raffi ever did. Banana Phone! W000t! It's just...not good. The lyrics and guitar just kind of...wander. It's not pleasant. At all.
"Which Will" falls victim to the same thing. It's got a nice intricate guitar, but Drake's love of repetition sucks the heart from the song. His songs are sometimes like the audio equivalent of a daydream: wander, wander, tra la la, wander, wander...meh. 2 for 4 so far.
"Horn" is an instrumental track, and it's interesting to me only in that it features some really strange rhythms and picking styles. The average listener who doesn't play guitar would probably find it unpleasant, and even I wouldn't make a habit of listening to it. I tried to imagine myself being the producer in the studio as Drake recorded it...
"Okay, that's a song."
"But it was just you fucking around on the guitar for a minute and a half."
"BURN IN HELL COCKSUCKER! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND MY GENIUS! THIS THING'S GONNA SELL A MILLION COPIES! I'LL KILL MYSELF IF IT DOESN'T!"
Which is a great point. This was what the record company thought was gonna be his big breakthrough? This has been extremely inaccessible up to now. You'd have to be a musician to dig this. That's probably why he's influenced so many musicians but remained generally unknown to the general public. Meh.
"Things Behind the Sun" is a guitar masterpiece, and its lyrics deal with Drake's failure to find an audience as a musician...and wondering aloud whether it's worth it to try. I like this song, if only because it has an actual chorus and is longer than 2 minutes.
"Know" is kinda cool and hipsterish...Drake mostly hums his way through it, then gives us four lines near the end. I...I really don't know whether to call this artistic vision or laziness by this point.
"Such a poor, gentle boy. Soooo misunderstood...poor Nick!"
"Four fucking lines? Really? That's all he had to say? Depressed shithead."
Given that I'll never listen to this song again now (ZERO re-playability), I'm leaning toward dick move.
"Parasite" is definitely the best song on this album. If you didn't know how to play guitar, and didn't know the lyrics, you'd say this was the most pleasant-on-the-ears song on the album so far. I dig this a lot, and the lyrics are pretty cool. Drake's a deep guy, for sure...it just doesn't come through on a lot of his songs. It does here. I love the punch he gets in at the last line. Really changed the whole song's meaning.
"Free Ride" is the song where Drake's eclectic guitar turns into an art form. Jesus, can anyone duplicate that picking style? You'd have to work at it for years. Yeah, he's doing that "matching-the-guitar-note-for-note" thing again. And yeah, it sounds like a kid's songs at certain points, but it's a really dark kid's song.
"Harvest Breed" is kinda poppy. Meh. The lyrics are either about his increasing depression and how he's ready for it to be over, or about new beginnings. It's hard to say, given how he wrote them. A very middle-of-the-road song.
The album's closer, "From the Morning," is a surprisingly light and airy end to an album that mostly set a morose mood. Sure, it's partly about reminding yourself to remember the things you used to love to do before depression ("and go play the game that you learnt from the morning"), but that's okay. Drake was a depressed guy. The medication sucked back then. At least he was trying.
So where are we at with this album as a whole? I love four songs on this album. 4-for-11 keeps you in the majors for sure, a .364 batting average. But it doesn't keep you alive and making music, evidently.
You'd really have to be in a specific mood to listen to this album all the way through. I think that mood is "sitting in your kitchen and wistfully remembering what it was like to be a child, becoming melancholy about it, but winding up hopeful that tomorrow you can regain that childlike state."
That's kind of a niche audience, Nick. Just saying.
Nick Drake wanted to be famous for his genius, but how he portrayed that genius unfortunately led him to be exactly what he was and is: a relatively unknown artist who would never be listened to at parties while he was alive, but who will be fondly remembered by listeners wearing headphones after his death.
Nick Drake was an artist who had to be remembered to be truly appreciated. None of the things he said meant anything while he was alive. They were the airy drawings of a talented child, and his listeners have become the parents clutching those drawings to their chests wondering what could've been.
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