Nico - Desertshore

Reprise - LP
France, 1975
Folk / Rock / Avantgarde 

Produced by John Cale, featuring music and artwork taken from Philippe Garrel's experimental film La Cicatrice Intérieur, Desertshore is a stone-cold classic by Nico, a haunting masterpiece that can hardly be compared to anything else. Unreal and Eternal. OG French pressing.

One of those cult records, revered by classic rock collectors, that I used to see on the walls of old school record shops. It took me a long time before I actually listened to it (probably turned off by the formentioned wall). I eventually came across a cheap copy at a car boot sale one day and it felt like I was seeing this puzzling artwork for the first time. It had to be more than some grumpy record seller's classic. And indeed it is. A record that I've been obsessed with since that day.

It's such an unconventional and troubling album, recorded at a time when there weren't that many unconventional albums, that I'm now wondering how is it that such a poisonous record has been sitting innocently on record store's walls, in broad daylight. Highly lysergic, it's nonetheless extremely well written, coherent and harmonious. Nico's singing is about the opposite of what you remember from the Velvet Underground & Nico's LP: It's a desperate yet powerful cry, a warlike chant flying over a telluric mix of harmoniums, field recordings, menacing strings and ghostly pianos. John Cale's is credited on the front of the artwork, and it's amply justified: his arrangements are unreal, some songs sounding like some late 1980's electronic stuff. Unreal and Eternal(VG+ / VG+)

Tracklist

1. Janitor Of Lunacy
2. The Falconer
3. My Only Child
4. Le Petit Chevalier
5. Abschied
6. Affraid
7. Mütterlein
8. All That Is My Own