Not entirely sure where I’m going with this one, but I suspect that it’s not going to be down sun-dappled pathways.
I’ve not done much “From the Past” things of late; this is partly to do with a whole bunch of really good new stuff, but also because the Past has been something that I’ve been trying to keep away from in recent months as it didn’t half hit me in the face recently. And as this is also essentially a blog, I’ve not been especially bloggy about anything. Again, events have conspired.
Coupled with something else that I will get around to later on, this is a record that I’ve come back to more than a few times over the years, as it’s one of those rare things that documents a state of mind so perfectly that it’s become a sad comfort. It’s just such a shame that this comfort didn’t extend to the artist himself.
Pink Moon is an album surrounded by myth and legend; some true (recorded over two late-night sessions with just Drake and an engineer/producer, consigned to almost complete obscurity and saved by a genius record contract and a car advert that led to more albums sold in a month than in the previous 30 years), and some a bit on the apocryphal side (tales of Nick turning up unannounced to drop the completed record off with Island’s receptionist before silently buggering off are wide of the mark), but the surrounding ephemera is unnecessary when painting a picture of this record as it’s a story all of its own.
Depression is an awful condition to have, and it’s hard to function when it sets in. Nick Drake had been suffering with this for some time, compounded by an apparent bitter disappointment that his work to date wasn’t embraced by a wider audience. Without his friend and arranger Robert Kirby alongside him (with one piano overdub on the title track aside, this is just Nick and a guitar), Pink Moon is a short, stark collection of songs that covers all the bases of a fragile mind, including the bits where everything is all calm and wondrous, because it’s not just one fixed mood despite general opinion on the affliction.
The album is bookended by two of the gentlest and beautiful songs in his short career, in the title track and the closing From The Morning. The familiar light and effortless fingerpicking style and relaxed to the point of horizontal voice is evident throughout these, and their placement here is crucial in leading the listener both into and out of the darkness in between.
The second song Place to Be is very strange indeed. Again – the guitar is gentle, the voice is level and sounding content, and the first verse speaks of facing life and of getting on with it: “And now I’m older see it face to face / And now I’m older gotta get up, clean the place”. After this though, the mood sinks suddenly. The second verse has him “darker than the deepest sea”, and the third and final verse “weaker than the palest blue”, still in this gentle, upbeat style.
From here on it gets rather bleak, although mostly in an incredibly eloquent and reasoned way, although an increasingly-heavy picking of the strings gives away the strong emotional pull that was holding Nick to the songs. Which Will comes across as a bitter post-rejection paean, Free Ride seems to be an angry swipe at the trappings of fame that he never received in his lifetime, and Parasite is a piece so obvious in its self-loathing that it’s difficult to listen to.
And amongst these strange and sullen outpourings, is Know. Quite unlike anything he’d done before, it’s as as cold and (to my ears) frightening glimpse into an unquiet mind as has ever been recorded. Deprived of those little “what are you doing?” synapses that most of us take for granted to the extent that most will never even notice that they’re there and that misfire so badly in the depressed, Know is the sound of insomnia driven manic, with once-normal but angry thoughts distilled into four notes and “Know that I love you /Know I don’t care / Know that I see you / Know I’m not there” sung in a quiet howl, before just stopping.
With From the Morning (another song of his used in a recent advert – this time for Lemsip, which I never quite understood) leading us out of what is essentially someone’s private hell into at least the hope of a happy ending, it’s hard not to be affected by the whole. Particularly in my case, as I have suffered from depression for far too many years. I’m suffering from it now in fact, and it’s not pleasant in the slightest. But somewhat oddly as far as someone looking in may think, Pink Moon is such a comfort to me, because of the way that Nick Drake (mostly) puts across his own sadnesses and frustrations in such a wonderful way that what may be a bleak record to some (and to himself), it’s an immensely positive one to others, and it has on more than one occasion brought light to places where I thought it couldn’t exist.
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