Pink Moon Nick Drake Island
One cold November evening in 1974, English singer-songwriter Nick Drake went to bed at his parents' house in rural Warwickshire and never woke up.
By the time of his death, aged 26, Drake had recorded three albums, the last of which, Pink Moon, portrayed a man at odds with both himself and the world. The joy and wonder of his debut album, Five Leaves Left, was long gone and Pink Moon was the result of an erratic period marred by artistic disappointment, depression and all-consuming melancholy.
Drake's path from eager Cambridge student to lauded English folk hero was unsteady at best, and fraught with regret and anger. Much has been written about Drake - particularly about his swift regression from shy and mysterious to withdrawn and frustrated - but the best way to get an insight into his pain is through his music.
In his final years he all but retreated from public life. He stopped performing and returned to the family home after producing an album so sad, so raw and so full of honesty that it makes for pretty tough listening.
Structurally, the album is simple: Drake performs unaccompanied on the guitar and piano. We now know Pink Moon is the album he always wanted to make - away from the busy instrumentation of the previous efforts - and is as close to a cry for help as the attempts he made to friends and loved ones in the days and weeks leading up to his death.
