The Daily Spin: Nick Drake - Pink Moon

I own an iPod, but for the most part I don't use it and stubbornly cling to my Discman. I listen to a different album every day on the old clunker, and here's today's:

It's barely half an hour in length and not even a handful of its 11 songs break the three-minute mark. Nevertheless, Nick Drake's classic final album, Pink Moon, left a huge impression on me when I heard it for the first time at the end of high school. It was one of those albums I couldn't even enough of, and I listened to it over and over for weeks. When I put it on now, it still draws me in and it'll be difficult to remove it from my CD player.

Drake was previously accompanied by a full band on his Five Leaves Left debut and its follow-up, Bryter Layter, but here (save for the piano on the title track) he and his acoustic guitar are unaccompanied. I think it's one of the best folk albums ever made, mainly because after all the instruments are stripped away, you can tell Drake was an outstanding musician. Evidence is in his surprisingly technical guitar work (technical for an acoustic guitar, at least) and his lyrics. Some of the songs (particularly "Parasite," on which Drake croons, "Take a look/You may see me in the dirt") are a bit eerie, but that only adds to their power.

Released: Feb. 25, 1972
Label: Island
Producer: John Wood