Both Sides: “Nico: Chelsea Girl”
Note: Both Sides is a little series I’m putting up on this space to keep the recreational writing juices flowing. Part personal journal, these reviews will not reflect a score and should not be considered thoughts of a professional music critic. More closely, they are an attempt to spark the word flame, kindling. The records featured are from my personal collection, some of which I haven’t revisited in a while.
This series begins with a staple in my collection, Nico’s Chelsea Girl. I can’t remember exactly when I added this album to my collection, but Discogs says that the 4 Men With Beards pressing I own was released in 2007, the year I became serious about collecting records. I’d set up my dad’s old Technics turntable in my dorm room the year before and was frequently spinning a beat-up copy of Steely Dan’s Aja at the time. This, in conjunction with my love of Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums throughout that decade, leads me to believe I acquired this sometime between 2007 and 2010.
I remember specifically setting out to collect every album that had songs included on The Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack, and this was the first acquisition toward that goal (a goal yet to be achieved). Coincidentally, the album begins with both tracks used in the film, “The Fairest of the Seasons” and “These Days,” both written by Jackson Browne. I’d always assumed that Browne recorded the first version of these songs, but it turns out that the 1967 versions Nico recorded were the first. It makes perfect sense, knowing now that Browne wrote “These Days,” in my mind a timeless folk-balladeer banger, at the age of 16. He went on to record the song himself in 1973 at the same time Gregg Allman released a version on Laid Back, which is the arrangement Browne used for his own recording.
I always found it interesting that the Wes Anderson film reversed the order of the opening tracks. On the album, the producers preferred a tragedy-based approach, going from the more major-sounding bounce of “The Fairest of the Seasons” (Now that it’s light / Now that the candle’s falling smaller in my mind / Now that it’s here / Now that I’m almost not so very far behind) to the more regret-themed “These Days.”
The second track on the album is a reference point for many transitional times in my life, but I remember one late-summer moment looking out from an unfamiliar cabin over a dock, listening to a sibilant cycle of lake waves and the after-the-fact string section, wondering what the hell would be coming next for me. It was a time where the night felt like a thick black curtain revealing nothing. One take away from listening to this album in full is how well it maintains a theme of questioning. To me, it’s a combination of Nico’s vocal delivery and the baroque-style arrangements. (Nico claimed the flute was the only compromise she loved on the album.)
It’s taken me over 10 years to embrace this album fully. Originally, I only bought it for the first two tracks. Some of my favorites now include the sparse, feedback-heavy “It Was a Pleasure Then,” which is the best representation of the psychedelic era in which the album was made. I imagine that if Nico had had her way, more of the tracks would have sounded like this one. The B-side includes a cover of Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Keep It with Mine,” Another Browne tune (“Somewhere There’s a Feather”), and Lou Reed’s “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams.” These three make a nice coffee-drinking morning medley, and the album is perfect for those of us always seeking small and large personal resurrections.