24th...A reward of grace

Desertshore. Five stars.

There are few records one could classify as entirely unique, but 1970s Desertshore is one of them. Produced by John Cale, Nico again unveils an entire world for you, but it couldn't be further from the coffee house atmosphere of Chelsea Girl. This landscape is windswept, desolate, expansive, European in the shadow of Bach and the troubadours at their most somber.

Nico wrote all her own material at this point and played harmonium. Cale did the rest, and the resulting creation is only 29 minutes, but what a half hour it gives you...

Janitor of Lunacy eases you into Nico's world with waves of sound that could be throwbacks to the era of Visigoths or Teutonic Knights. She still has a technically unlovely voice, but she sings as if from a great distance in time and space.

The Falconer starts with gentle percussion and piano; you can almost see people filing into church. 40 hypnotic seconds later, Nico changes the dynamic. Organ and harmonium wax and wane, the percussion turns ominous. It's Gothic, you understand it and then the gentle piano returns to haunting effect. Is the song a reassuring one? Who is the "falconier?" What mystery is being enacted here?

Mystery is the key to the album, and you won't find a single answer to the lyrical enigmas present. My Only Child is nearly a Capella with choral singing. Sound is used merely to emphasize the "morning/evening" passages.

One minute is then given to her son Ari, singing Le Petit Chevalier. It is hardly long enough to be more than a curiosity, yet it forms a timely break from the Germanic tones and the melody is quite beautiful.

Cale gets out the violin for Abschied, which Nico sings in her native tongue. Controlled turbulence and the avant-garde mixed with melodicism.

Afraid is driven by piano and stately strings. She repeats every line. It isn't at all frightening, unlike Abschied, and comes closest to Chelsea Girl accessibility. A pool of calm in this strange record.

Mutterlein returns to German. In many ways a compound of Janitor, Abschied and My Only Child. Heaviest song, with the continuous tap-tap-tapping that puts me in mind of a death-watch beetle....

All That Is My Own is a fitting coda, with her spoken word prayer standing out. "He who knows/may pass on/the road unknown/and meet me on the desertshore..." There's a chaotic quality that appeals after all the more rigid structures gone before, and a fitting sense of pride; ownership in the strange land she's created.

This is dark and somber, it is true, yet distant. The listener looks on, but is not invited in; denied a sense of familiarity. This music will not make your heart bleed. Nor will you be thinking "oh! those posers! Selling more doom and gloom music...."

Desertshore is simply something else. Transporting, meditative, ahead of its time (1970?) and, considering that I, who usually flit from one rock artist to another, now want to absorb the sounds of Bach, probably mind expanding as well.