Nick Drake - Pink Moon
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Free Music Notes for Pink Moon
Free Music Review: gut-wrenchingly emotional and hauntingly beautiful
Hit: 5 Stars
listening to this cd is always a profound emotional experience for me. i can't pinpoint one or two songs that make the album great, though i do have my favorites. every song is beautiful on both a superficial and deep level: through the transparent and lush beauty of every track, it is almost impossible not to feel the crushing sense of doom in drake's delivery. the songs are haunting, ethereal, and jaw-droppingly beautiful.
drake was without a doubt a superb musician: he was both a masterful guitar player, with a fingerpicking technique unlike any other; and a beautiful and heartfelt vocalist. his dusky, sensitive voice managed to be both bashful and intense at the same time. parallels have frequently been drawn between drake's guitar playing and that of hendrix; once you get past their stylistic differences, you'll find that they were remarkably similar (and equally skilled guitar players). perhaps the most remarkable thing about drake's guitar playing was his ability to create the richest soundscape of any of his albums with only himself and his voice (previous albums were elaborately orchestrated). it is easy to forget that it was only drake and his guitar, save for the sparse and brief piano line of the title track.
to be fully appreciated, this album should be listened to intently and thoroughly. giving it half of your attention is almost a crime: although you will certainly enjoy the almost-soothing quality of drake's voice and his gorgeous melodies, you will not be able to feel the deep and profound beauty of drake's emotions that are so intricately woven into the fabric of every song.
it's hard to believe that such great beauty could come out of such horrible darkness, and i am brought to tears when i realize that one person had the capacity to make something as amazing as 'pink moon'. in an ironic way, this album gives me hope that the rest of humanity has the capacity to create things equally beautiful. nick drake was inspiring simply because of his ability to create such beauty. his work transcended the world of darkness that he lived in, while remaining true to it and never being anything other than authentic. 'pink moon' continues, more than 30 years after his death, to shine like a bright beacon, here to remind us that we all have the capacity to create light out of darkness. i'm sure if drake knew what a legacy his work would eventually leave, his world would have been a lot brighter.
Free Music Review: Heart Wrenching and Beautiful
Hit: 5 Stars
As I slipped into the cold rain on a beautifully rainy Saturday morning, I casually walked to Starbucks. I ordered a nice, hot drink and found myself a nice place to sit and watch the pitter patter of the rain on the street. I realized that I had delayed my purchase of some album that my friend suggested to me, but remembered that he said it was perfect for rainy days. I lazily made my way to my car and found the nearest cd store and immediately found a nice brand new copy of the cd. Something felt right about the purchase.
I ripped open the cd shrink wrap (triumphantly, no doubt. don't you love that feeling of tearing off the plastic?), and found an intimidating picture of the man known as Nick Drake, glaring at the owner of the cd. I popped the cd into the cd player to hear a nicely strummed guitar leading into a lulling whispery voice, remnant to me of a more emotionally disfigured Jack Johnson. The singer singing to me about a Pink Moon coming to get me, which at first seems scary, assured me with his voice that it would be alright.
The album keeps its dreary, but pleasant, tone throughout the whole album. Drake sings to the listener about moons, mornings, love, the process of aging and mostly unsurity and weakness. The lyrics, as Allmusic put, are definitely not upbringing ("you can say the sun is shining if you really want to", "I am the parasite of this town"),but also are definitely not depressing. They express a tone that is beautiful and longing, almost emotionally scarred by the tragedy that the singer went through.
Nick Drake, musically, has interesting chord tunings, useful picking styles, peculiar rhythem movements and chord patterns. His voice falls over the chords with an ageless easyness. He constantly lulles the listener into a state of awareness, and self-realization. He sings with a kind of vulnerability that no other artist could emulate.
The lack of additional instruments gives Drake's voice and ethreal quality. With just an acoustic guitar, the singer-songwriter gets his message across clearly. He puts his voice on record, in such a way, that its a gorgeous, heart-wrenching listen. The album made me feel a little saddened that this was the man's last effort, only to overdose on anti-depressants.
As each song flowed into the next, I took a long sip of my warm drink, only to think that this was the perfect album for the day.
Free Music Review: Beautiful
Hit: 5 Stars
In Alabama, where I live, during spring and summer mornings you can hear among the joyful, cacaphonous voices of the songbirds the low, melancholy call of the mourning dove. This probably isn't the best comparison, since you have to know bird calls for it to mean anything, but if a mourning dove ever made a record, it would sound like Nick DrakeAdmittedly, my first encounter with Nick Drake was through the infamous VW ad. For two years the song Pink Moon resided on my computer's hard drive under the title "VW Commercial - Cabrio Song" right next to the file "VW Commercial - Jetta Song" (Remember that one, where the wipers and everything else are in sync with the beat on the radio?). Well, eventually I found out that the song actually had a name and that that mysterious, downtrodden voice belonged to a real person. I did some research, read some reviews, and bought the album Pink Moon on amazon about a week and a half ago. When it came, I took it back to my room after classes, popped it in the CD player, and had a listen.
I've been listening to this short, 31 minute album over and over again for about 5 days. I am astonished by its simplistic beauty. Another reviewer was right in likening Pink Moon to impressionist poetry. Indeed, rather than presenting the listener with tangible, concrete images of tortured existence (such as those of his oft-invoked blues counterpart, Robert Johnson, i.e., running from the devil, trouble with women, homelessness), Drake's esoteric lyrics and seemingly apathetic delivery thereof evoke the state of mind of man at his most despairing. Pink Moon is not a photorealistic documentation of the emotions and experiences treated, but a canvas clothed in strokes of blue here and purple there, incoherent at close range. But when examined as a whole, this album paints a stunningly beautiful, however heartbreaking, picture.
Excluding the title track, which employs a bit of piano, the entire album is just Drake and his acoustic guitar. His fingerstyle playing is fantastic, and he employs alternate tuning to great effect; the ringing, blending tones of the open strings are gorgeous and fatten his sound considerably, and his chord voicings are unlike any I have ever heard.
This album comes highly, highly recommended. It is stark and arresting, and sure to move.
Free Music Review: One of my top five favorite albums...
Hit: 5 Stars
Simply put, this is some of the most intimate and haunting music I've ever heard in my life. It is also one of my favorite albums of all time. I had read an article in 1990 which mentioned one of Nick Drake's songs and piqued my interest in his music. For some reason his name stuck in my head for a few years even though I wasn't able to find any of his CD's in stores at the time. I found "Pink Moon" in a store in 1995 and bought it immediately, excited that I finally found something by Nick Drake. This CD runs about a half hour, and the night that I bought it I literally listened to this at least 6-7 times for what ended up being hours. I just couldn't get over it; his voice so hushed yet so expressive, the otherwordly tunings on his guitar, the impressive and powerful finger picking style evident on each song...it still amazes me today. I really believed at the time (and was probably right) that this was one of the best kept secrets in music, and until the Volkswagon commercial which featured the song "Pink Moon" it was. Nick Drake had struggled with mental illness and depression in the years preceding this release and the lyrics, desperate and depressing as they can be, give an insight into his mind that apparently no one close to him was able to achieve. The surprise is that the end of the album features the more optimistic "From The Morning", which Nick's parents chose to quote on his gravestone. The idea behind this, an all acoustic album with no instrumental backing aside from a brief piano solo in the title track didn't help his already suffering record sales and his depression increased until his death from an overdose of anti-depressants in 1974. His biography made me more aware of why this didn't sell more copies until recently, explaining that with bands like Roxy Music dominating the airwaves at the time this album was not exactly going to take the world by storm and seemed decidedly uncommercial. The fact that this was Nick Drake's final album (out of only three he released) is a sad fact, but thank God this was made. My CD collection is nearing 1,000 and this CD has remained one of my top five favorites for the past ten years. Definitely a "desert island" disc.Free Music Review: A Lovely Farewell Note
Hit: 5 Stars
Nick Drake has become the darling of the soundtrack set. His songs have been used in the films "Serendipity," "Garden State," "Dream With the Fishes," and "The Royal Tenenbaums," as well as in a Volkswagen commercial. Pretty amazing for a guy who achieved no real commercial success while he was active and has now been dead for over 30 years.
"Pink Moon" was the last album Drake recorded. It's a haunting experience to listen to it now with the benefit of hindsight, knowing that the artist was only a couple years from taking his own life (though many will argue whether his death was a suicide or just an accidental overdose). According to Drake's producer/engineer John Wood, "Pink Moon" was laid down late at night over two evenings in early 1972 and featured almost no overdubs. The tracks average roughly two minutes in length, and the whole thing clocks in under half an hour, but the brevity and immediacy only add to the emotional impact.
The more complex arrangements that marked Drake's first two albums, "Five Leaves Left" and "Bryter Layter," are gone. What remains are Nick's soft, wistful voice, his guitar, and a little piano piece on the title track. The album is drenched in loneliness, disconnection, and the hard-earned advice of someone who was learning the difficult lessons of a world with which he could not cope. It is also dotted with signs of Drake's desire to depart this life; the four-line lyric to "Know" sounds an awful lot like a goodbye note. At the same time, tracks such as "From the Morning" reveal someone still able to find beauty and hope around him, even if he was only finding it for others and not for himself.
I'd single out other songs, but "Pink Moon" is a collective experience; the perfect essence of folk music and a sorrowful portrait of a young man in the grips of an emotional state that he could not master as he mastered his art. I think few would argue that the best music is honest and offers us a look inside the performer. "Pink Moon" certainly meets that description, providing a window into an injured soul. At times it's almost painful to listen, but at the same time it's too magically beautiful to turn off.