203. Nick Drake, "Pink Moon"

 


Thought experiment: Where would this album be today if the title track hadn't famously been used in a Volkswagen Cabriolet ad in 1999?


(Sample YouTube comment: "This introduced my young self to Nick Drake. I'm eternally grateful.")  We can say that U.S. sales of this album went from 6,000 a year to about 74,000 in 2000.  I'm surprised it sold 6,000 copies a year before this!  Every day, 16 people in the US were buying this album even before the ad.  I imagine they were all boring their friends by going on and on about how great it is.

It is great!  It's just... a mood, as the kids say today.  Prior to this, Drake had recorded two more conventionally orchestrated records, neither one of which did particularly well.  Recorded over two nights in 1971, this album is just Drake and his exquisite guitar playing, except for a single piano overdub in the title track.  It sounds like loneliness and introspection and also a coming to terms.  Yes, it is full of melancholy but also acceptance.  From "Place to Be," the lovely second track:

When I was young, younger than before
I never saw the truth hanging from the door
And now I'm older, see it face to face
And now I'm older, gotta get up, clean the place

And I was green, greener than the hill
Where flowers grow and the sun shone still
Now I'm darker than the deepest sea
Just hand me down, give me a place to be

On a song like "Road," the third track, you can hear him almost hesitating on the guitar parts, the fingerpicking not as flawless as it is elsewhere, but it's perfect for the song, which, again, looks at acceptance ("You can take a road that takes you to the stars now/I can take a road that'll see me through").  "Know" has an identifiable riff, unusual for this album, that's bluesy in a stripped-down Nick Drake way.  Listen to it and you can see why people compared this to Robert Johnson.

Although mostly ignored during his brief career (Drake died of an overdose of antidepressants at the age of 26, in 1974), he was one of those musicians beloved by other musicians, and you can hear this album's influence on Belle & Sebastian and Cat Power and yes, of course, Elliott Smith.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Definitely.

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