Pink Moon - Nick Drake

There is a painting by Van Gogh of a wheat field. Its broad, violent strokes depict a murder of crows taking flight, their bedraggled wings struggling to get them airborne into a sky smothered with black clouds. Beneath them a path runs toward a light on the horizon, but before it can reach it, the wheat, writhing fearsome as the ocean, drowns it. It seems remarkably poignant, portentous even, when you consider that it was one of the last paintings he made before he took his own life. But Van Gogh often painted crows, and he painted in all weathers; the turbulent, stylised strokes are simply his technique (he was in fact a careful painter, not the ...  Read the complete review

There has finally been a growth in acknowledgment for the music of Nick Drake. In his time, Drake sold few records and his confidence was low after receiving very little recognition of his work. After such artists as Bernard Butler, Gomez, Elliot Smith and Beth Orton singled out Drake as a major influence on their own music, Drake's three studio albums have been re-mastered and released as popularity grows. This album (recorded and released in 1972) was Drake's last before his premature death of an accidental overdose of anti-depressants in 1974. It is seen as one of the most emotional albums of all time, with Drake's voice at ...  Read the complete review

Has there ever been a record which so perfectly encapsulates the mood of its creator ? I doubt it. "Pink Moon" written and recorded by Nick Drake and released in 1972, some two years before his untimely death, is easily the most moving album I have ever heard. Running at under half an hour and stripped of the strings and lush orchestration of his earlier albums, "Pink Moon" presents the listener with a weariness which you can almost touch - the refrain in "Road" for instance ("You can take the road which takes you to the stars now, I will take the road which will see me through")perfectly sums up the idea of ...  Read the complete review

This is Nick Drake, the soft folk singer-songwriter of otherworldly lyrics and complex fingerpicking music who died in his twenties.....His influence lives on, but imitators are few since his instrument and voice were so suited to each other, that it almost seems pointless to try. This is his last album, recorded with intimacy with one sound man. There is no over-production like the earlier albums, and it is better this way. His songs have a timeless quality that gives him such a cult following, a man at one with nature and himself, but not really with the world. Nick Drake was exceptionally shy and subject to depression, and his some of ...  Read the complete review