Nico
Chelsea Girl

THE REVIEW

Already the cover of this 1966 album, with two intense overlapping profiles of Christa Paffgen, known as Nico, who here debuts as a fascinating chanteuse, exudes a melancholic sweetness and a mysterious sensuality that capture. And the music of "Chelsea Girl" (which was originally intended to accompany images of the eponymous Andy Warhol film) is no less: in these ten songs, predominantly for guitar and strings, written by some of the most illustrious names in rock, there is a dreamlike atmosphere, sometimes as light as an April day, sometimes dark and leaden, but always magnetic and seductive.

The album begins with two songs written by a very young and surprising Jackson Browne: "The Fairest of The Seasons" is a piece of poignant sweetness, thanks to the strings and Nico's heartfelt interpretation, while "These Days" is a fresh sensual vignette, like the more melancholic "Somewhere There’s a Feather", also by Browne, which we find in the second part of the album.
The two Browne pieces are followed by four compositions by members of the Velvet Underground: "Little Sister" is an ethereal waltz for harmonium and strings with an imaginative text by Lou Reed, while the agitated "Winter Song" by John Cale foreshadows the bleak experimentation of "It Was a Pleasure Then" (by Reed, Cale, and Nico herself), a very "Velvet-like" track, with sickly and rarefied atmospheres, broken melodies, noises, and dissonances. Equally dark is "Chelsea Girls", thanks to a text by Reed (here co-author, with Sterling Morrison) that speaks of desperate women, drugs, and violence. This track is one of the highlights of the album, along with the alluring invitation of "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams", in which Nico's sensual voice gives power to Lou Reed's poetic visions.

The album is completed by the airy folk ballad "I’ll Keep It With Mine", written by Bob Dylan, and the intense and sparse "Eulogy To Lenny Bruce", by Tim Hardin, a spectral requiem, in which Nico's mournful voice, accompanied only by a guitar, closes with ineffable emotion this truly timeless album.