77. Nico - Chelsea Girl (1967)

1. Fairest Of The Seasons
2. These Days
3. Little Sister
4. Winter Song
5. It Was A Pleasure Then
6. Chelsea Girl
7. I'll Keep It With Mine
8. Somewhere There's A Feather
9. Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams (And Dream Your Troubles Away)
10. Eulogy To Lenny Bruce

EEEEEEEEEY NICO MY CAAAHSIN! WANNA GO SHOOT SOME POOL?!

Actually, never mind. This album would sound terrible if it were in Grand Theft Auto 4. I'd be way too moody to kill anybody. It'd be the most miserable thing in the world. This album is the sort of thing you'd play in a coffee club to chase out the bourgeois. It's "chamber folk" which as far as I can tell means they forgot to tell the string section to leave the recording studio.

Despite my snarkiness, this is a highly compelling album. It's beautiful, cold, forlorn, and if you listen to it like I did, lying on the Squiggle staring into the stars, it can even be spellbinding. You might remember Nico from the super-acclaimed Velvet Underground debut, and most of the members of that group were involved with writing and recording the album in some way. Save for one song , though, you wouldn't really know it. This is music far removed from the famed discordance of the Velvet Underground. While their music is perfectly suited for interpreting the throes of heroin addiction, the music here is tailored towards its subjects. Take 'Chelsea Girls', the toe-tapping (well, if you haven't got a pulse...) title track. It's already a sad song as it is, but when you factor in the oh-so Baroque strings and Nico's strange emotionally detached German voice, it becomes nearly heartbreaking. Listen to the flute, man. According to an interview given years later, Nico didn't like this album because she had very little creative control over how it would sound, and she hated it, particularly the flute: "But the flute! The first time I heard the album, I cried and it was all because of the flute." Well, so did I, but that's because it's a sad fuckin' flute, man! Take that away and the song loses so much of its tragic melancholy air!


Basically what I'm saying is that I am better than Nico at music. What's she gonna do, haunt me?


Oh yeah, there are other songs here too. Including, much to my surprise, two rather good songs written by a 19 year old Jackson Browne! Speaking as a fellow 19 year old, fuck you. Pretty much all the songs on this album follow the same formula, except for the sore thumb 'It Was A Pleasure Then' which is where the Velvet Underground sound comes out of nowhere. Psychedelic, discordant strings, eh? I'm not quite sure how I feel about this song. There were aspects of it that I liked, particularly some moments at the beginning that were downright Sigur Ros-y 30 years too early, but I don't really like how completely different it is from every other song on the album. If it had been placed elsewhere, perhaps it would be recognized for the beautiful (if slightly misshapen) snowflake that it is.


This album didn't necessarily seem like an album that I would enjoy, but maybe it's just the overcast skies, the autumn air, and my general moodiness as of late that  made this album speak to me so much. Whatever it is, it's certainly nice to find an album that soundtracks my setting so well, even if it is on a pre-ordered list. I guess sometimes things just work that way. 9/10