Nick Drake- Pink Moon

I don't want to give you the wrong idea, but Pink Moon is one of the albums I always listen to when I'm depressed. I don't listen to it because it is a depressing album. I listen to it because it is the eloquent expression of what it feels like to be depressed. So many bands have made such awful music with such artless lyrics about depression and sadness for so many years that the whole thing has been robbed of any merit. Yet Pink Moon is as perfect and poetic a mood piece as you could hope to find in any artform.

Pink Moon is the most serenely sparse album I've ever heard. It is an argument for stripping down your music and doing as much as possible with as little as possible. It's interesting that there remains some debate about whether it's only Drake playing acoustic guitar on the songs. Many claim he would have had to overdub to play this surprisingly complicated music. Whether he did or not, I've always thought of Pink Moon as a lesson to all future musicians, and singer/songwriter types especially. Drake went the opposite way that most do now, ending his career with a minimalist album instead of starting from minimalism and gradually becoming more orchestrated and ornate, as, say, Elliott Smith and Iron and Wine did.

It's hard to explain what Drake accomplished here, since those who haven't heard the album yet will assume his acoustic guitar playing is either showy or monotonous. So said non-listeners may think that the sole use of piano on the title track would make that the most distinctive and track here, but Drake's acoustic playing and melancholy lyrics give each song its own character. Think of how many albums you've heard where the band has dozens of instruments at their disposal yet every song sounds the same and the whole thing goes on for 15 minutes too long. With a mere acoustic, Drake turns in a diverse and memorable set of songs: the humming and repetitive, blues-y guitar part of 'Know' make it sound like a Leadbelly cover, while 'Things Behind The Sun' offers seemingly cold advice that blooms on the joyous sounding "take your time and you'll be fine" line. Best of all, Pink Moon is a lean 28 minutes long. Any longer and it would start to become monotonous.

I may have started by saying this album is an eloquent expression of what it feels like to be depressed, but whenever I've listened to it, I always find it to be comforting and hopeful. It's no secret that Drake suffered from depression, yet I don't buy that Pink Moon or any of his releases predicted his death/possible suicide. To me, this album is what it feels like to be depressed, but it's the sort of depression where you know, deep down, you are going to get over it and feel better. You can't close an album with a delicate song like 'From The Morning' and be a hopeless sad bastard. If you listen closely to that warm voice of his, from time to time you can almost hear him smiling as he sings. True, there is great sadness, loneliness, and alienation in Drake's music, but there is also comfort for those feeling such things.

And there is also hope. Nick Drake had hope, because hopeless people don't create anything, let alone albums of such transcendent beautiful sadness.

5 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Album of the Week: Elliott Smith-Roman Candle

This could get awfully discursive, but Elliott Smith’s death never rang as a huge tragedy in my heart. Before the raging torrent of email pours in, let me explain.

I’ve heard all of Smith’s albums. I even read the book about him, Elliott Smith and the Ballad of Big Nothing. To be sure, I love his music and his lyrics mean a lot to me—in fact, when I get really depressed to the point that I don’t want to do anything except lay in bed, his self titled album is one of three albums I listen to to help me through, the others being Cat Power’s The Covers Record and Nick Drake’s Pink Moon. And much like Nick Drake, to whom he is so often compared it’s become a cliché even to point out how often he’s compared to him, I think Smith’s music is at its best when it is stripped down and unadorned.

This, then, is why I didn’t find Smith’s death especially affecting, because in my opinion his best and most affecting work was behind him by the time he killed himself (or, as certain fans insist, he was murdered). Say what you will about XO and Figure 8, but they don’t do it for me like his first three because they sound too big, too polished, too orchestrated, and too grasping. Certain singer/songwriter types get better as their sound gets fuller and more mannered—witness the full flowering of the talents of Sufjan Stevens and Andrew Bird on their last albums—while others seem more labored and watered down, such as Elliott Smith.

I promise I’m going somewhere with this.

Roman Candle was Smith’s first solo album, though he had been a member of the band Heatmiser for several years. The story goes that Smith recorded the album in his then-girlfriend’s house and didn’t intend to release it, but after Cavity Search Records heard it, they convinced him to. Ah, but a cursory read of Wikipedia could have told you that, so let me tell you something new: the album is not nearly as lo-fi as people make it out to be. Compare this to, say, the early recordings of the Mountain Goats and it’s a night and day difference.

I always read a lot about both Nick Drake and Elliott Smith’s lyrics and lives, but the one thing I never hear mentioned is their skill with a guitar. Granted it is not in the metal/jazz soloing mode, but their fingerpicking and unique chording style deserve special mention time and again—Drake for the still-confounding playing on Pink Moon and Smith for his frequently brilliant electric guitar work on Roman Candle as well as the Drake-esque acoustics of his self titled album.

The other problem I have with the later albums of Elliott Smith is their length. Roman Candle is a lean half hour and as such never overstays its welcome. What’s more, the songs are of consistently high quality—‘Roman Candle’ is maybe his best opening track from an album ever other than the landmark ‘Needle In The Hay’; the direct (and soon to become Smith standard) double-tracked vocals on ‘No Name #4’; even the od- man-out closing instrumental ‘Kiwi Maddog 20/20’, which has a country twang and lightening quality, is great.

I said his death didn’t affect me too greatly, which is strange because I grew up with Smith’s self titled album. No, that’s not true. The first thing I heard by him was Figure 8 and while I liked it, it didn’t mean much to me other than the relationship-style songs like ‘Somebody That I Used To Know.’ However, discovering his self titled album during the latter stages of high school gave me something to return to again and again over the years. It often played in my head while I went through formative experiences in college and afterward. So it’s hard for me to be critical about the album because it means so much to me—thus I inevitably think it’s the best thing he’s ever done, and would recommend it over Roman Candle. However, this is a brilliant album in its own right that deserves more attention. If all you know about Elliott Smith is ‘Miss Misery’ or the iconic cover to Figure 8, track this album down and find out why so many people think his early work is so essential.