Nick Drake’s 1972 album Pink Moon is 28 minutes of the most beautifully desolate music you will ever hear - it was his last release before he died of a drugs overdose two years later at the age of 26. Its last track is From the Morning, which contains the lines, ‘now we rise and we are everywhere’, which now seems remarkably and scarily prescient. These are the lines that are also on Drake’s gravestone.
In a seemingly unrelated development, From the Morning is the incidental music to the new Vicks cough syrup advert.
Run for your lives. It’s the end of civilisation as we know it.
Featured Friday: Fantasy Epics
1 day ago
2 comments:
You have piqued my interest... I like desolate and beautiful. What sort of musical territory would it be in (Nico, Pink Floyd, Bowie, etc.)?
Hmmm, 'none of the above', I reckon... Drake is very 'folky', but with a real desolate (almost depressed) edge. Perhaps the best starting points are 'A Treasury', released in 2004, which is a compilation featuring tracks from all three of his albums. I think the best is probably Pink Moon, as it's just Drake and an acoustic guitar, a tiny bit of overdubbed piano, and that's it. That said, there are some great tracks on Bryter Later, but it's spoilt a bit by being a little over-lush in places, which is certainly something you can't pin on Pink Moon.
Nip over to brytermusic.com (which is essentially the Drake estate), and they've got a loop featuring a few tracks which should give you a pretty good idea of what he sounds like...
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