Pink Moon [VINYL]

received in excellent shape

No flaws

The Nick Drake vinyl version of Pink Moon turned up on time and was well packed from musicMagpie at a very good price with a download voucher. I have always admired Nick and his music and wanted this album for a long time. I took the shrink wrap off and was not disappointed. It is a heavy weight vinyl version with a facsimile sleeve of the original and even comes with a copy of an old Island inner sleeve. The record label is a copy of the pink rim Island label. A lot of time has been taken to reproduce the original packaging and they have done a good job. It obviously has a bar code on the back of the sleeve which would not have been there but any one who remembers the pink rim Island label will smile when they open the record. The original Pink Moon vinyl record now goes for hundreds of pounds which I am not prepared to pay ! I sat down with the dog at my feet with a drink and lowered the cartridge on my Linn Sondek LP12 on to the record. It sounded great and with no pops or crackles and I played it and went in to a dream. It is so long since I last heard this album and frankly it's not my favourite Nick Drake record but it has a stark stripped down sound which is quite moving. I have collected records for over thirty years and have an original Pink Rim Island Bryter Layter which I found for two pounds in between top of the pops albums in the 90's . I actually had to put it back in the plie of records again to find it again such was the thrill ! I could only compare the sound against that but Pink Moon measured up very well on the Back to Black version. This was a lovely time capsule and any one seeking the record should be happy . Any vinyl collector could spot it is not original fairly quickly but that's not the point. The joy of playing a crisp new vinyl record never goes away and I would certainly consider buying further copies of reissues of rare records if they were as good as this! I believe the masters still exist for Pink Moon so a good job can be done . I think for Bryter Layter a sound engineer from the recording still had some tapes and as for For Five Leaves Left they don't exist any more so maybe those releases require a bit more caution when buying to find the best versions on vinyl. As for Pink Moon I don't think you will find much better than this. I would recommend any one listening to Nick Drake for the first time to play Bryter Layter first which has some lovely orchestration on it and beautiful songs compared to Pink Moon which is much rawer. It is a shame Nick Drake was never fully recognisied in his life time but if you look back to 1973 his music was squashed by some heavy weight artists such as David Bowie , Bob Marley coming in to form and with Punk just round the corner a lot of things were going to change. While people love music some one will always love Nick as his music is timeless in a way. Anyway I have blabbed enough just buy the damn thing and raise a toast to Nick. Gone but never forgotten.

I have previously reviewed Nick's first two albums and I have now arrived at his final album.It has been said that Nick's approach to the recording of 'Pink Moon' was influenced at the time by his disappointment and resulting disillusionment due to the previous poor sales of his other albums .Here he decided to venture into the studio along with only engineer John Wood and the two men then produced the whole thing together whilst Wood was responsible for engineering the album .Nick's acoustic guitar playing and vocals here tend to be both sparse and intimate whilst he also plays piano on occasion .'Pink Moon' has it's own rather introverted identity within Nick Drake's studio output.There are a total of eleven songs and the whole album lasts less than 29 minutes in duration .Even though the songs are very short it is testament to their power that each song sounds complete and unneeded of any additional time in order to , in any way ,improve them . The instrumental 'Horn ' for example lasts for only about 1 minute 25 seconds approximately !There are occasional hints of borrowed melodies from earlier songs EG 'Know' is similar to 'Cello Song' whilst melodic themes to 'At The Chime of a City Clock' and 'Northern Sky ' are also in evidence ;albeit subtly .My personal favourite songs here are 'Road'( with it's excellent and inventive guitar work ) , the mysterious 'Things Behind the Sun' ,the catchy 'Free Ride' and the rather sinister 'Parasite'.The album also finishes with a strong song called 'From the Morning'.All fan's of Nick Drake's music will often state an opinion as to which of his three studio albums is the best.The truth is that each of the albums has a unique character all of it's own .My advice is to listen to them in the order in which they were originally released before deciding if indeed there is a pecking order in terms of musical worth .In my opinion 'Five Leaves Left' , 'Bryter Layter' and 'Pink Moon 'are all definite 5 star albums !!!