Review Summary: Creation is our gift. Nick Drake understood its magnitude.
There’s something special about Pink Moon: some sort of incredible, supernatural presence that leaves a magical lasting impression on the listener. There is something more behind every hushed vocal, chord, and guitar line that stretches across its paradoxically short yet vast canvas. Drake’s casual mastery of the fret board and the ethereal melodies he creates almost seem to imply some cosmic force, greater than himself, had possessed him and lent its influence through his voice and hands. Or perhaps he had stumbled across some vast, universal pool of energy in the deepest recesses of his mind and pulled from it just the tiniest, microscopic inkling of its influence and experience and translated it through the mere eleven tracks found on Pink Moon.
It is the only explanation I can think of, for something seemingly so short and minimalistic to be so incredibly vast, all-encompassing, and so elusive. There is always a tiny, barely noticeable fragment of mystery in the background. It forces you to latch on, and search desperately for some sort of phrase, an explanation, something describable about it. It is something bewilderingly unique, a sort of jewel of indiscernible color off in the distance. You can feel it. It is intimate, yet distant. Cosmic, yet earthly. Mysterious, yet familiar. Tangible, yet ethereal. It is there, and at the same time, it isn’t. It is seemingly human, yet it makes you doubt that a human being was even responsible for its creation. You could listen to the record for hours, entire nights devoted entirely to every single inch of its immaculately painted canvas of sounds, and you wouldn’t be any closer to understanding just what it is.
The truth is, you don’t need to know. There are just some things too wonderful, too beautiful, too indescribable for us to understand with anything less than our feelings. And that is the great thing about it. The feeling will never fade, never die away, or rot into the ground or dissipate into the air. By essence it is cosmic, infinite, without end or beginning. It simply exists in its own profound mystery, and is un-replicable by any other force. Pink Moon is something truly special. Something that should be protected, as an example of what human beings, in all our mystery and potential are capable of producing. Creation is our gift. Nick Drake understood its magnitude.
