77. Nico - Chelsea Girls (October 1967)

1. The Fairest of the Seasons*

2. These Days*

3. Little Sister

4. Winter Song

5. It Was a Pleasure Then*

6. Chelsea Girls

7. I'll Keep It with Mine

8. Somewhere There's a Feather

9. Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams

10. Eulogy to Lenny Bruce

A-

Listening to this album brought back a lot of memories of my university days, when I used to listen to a lot of Nico and the Velvet Underground and so forth. It's nice to come back to this music, especially now that I'm older and a little worldlier.

Chelsea Girls is a strange album. The majority of songs are delicate pieces of chamber pop and folk music, broken up by strange excursions like the astonishing "It Was a Pleasure Then" and the nightmarish title track. Unlike Nico's later efforts, none of the songs are written by her. This is kind of interesting, as it means that the songwriters (all male) are effectively applying Nico's voice to their own songs. And it really is an extraordinary voice. Low, yet note-perfect, and with a thick German accent, it really has to be heard for itself. What's surprising about Chelsea Girls is that, unlike with the dark, austerely beautiful music of Nico's proper solo albums like the Marble Index and Desertshore, there are songs here where she's capable of genuine warmth. I'm not entirely sure what "The Fairest of the Seasons" is about, but it's a beautiful and effecting piece of folk pop. And "These Days", Nico's most famous song, is a reflection on growing older, giving up, and retreating from the world - but the music is so pretty, and Nico's voice hits such a note of optimistic warmth, that it becomes a celebration of self-imposed loneliness rather than a lament.

The real outliers on this album are "Winter Song", "It Was a Pleasure Then", and the title track. The first, featuring deeply cryptic lyrics, sounds like some sort of mediaeval ballad and is quite dark and strange. "It Was a Pleasure Then", on the other hand, sounds like it could be a VU song - it's a lengthy, noisy, ragaish drone in which Lou Reed and John Cale play warped vamps and riffs on guitar and viola while Nico coos wordlessly at the top of her range. It's a beautiful song which, if not for the crystal clear production, could easily have closed-out the first Velvet Underground album. And then there's "Chelsea Girls", written by Lou Reed, which presents a tragic view of Warhol's Factory scene and the freaks and drug addicts that populated it, and which is anchored by a very cool bass motif.

Nico would effectively disown this album. Anyone familiar with her later work can see that it's light years removed from it. And apparently she wanted a rockier album, with drums and electric guitars. Instead, producer Tom Wilson layered the tracks with strings (which work quite well, often playing rhythmically to compensate for the lack of drums and bass) and jazz flute (which is honestly a bit much). But whether or not Nico was dissatisfied with her lack of creative input, or the way the album turned out, it can't detract from what is a real gem of a listen - an album that manages to bridge the divide between gentle folk rock and the world of drugged-out noise experimentations going on in Nico's other band.