Get the latest gossip

Nico: The Marble Index/Desertshore review – an unforgettable trip to a very dark place

These two reissued solo albums from the German singer have a fearsome reputation – but they offer an experience like no other

In the popular imagination, her solo work falls into three categories: unrepresentative (jaunty debut single I’m Not Sayin’ and Chelsea Girls, which the singer hated so much, she burst into tears the first time she played it); cobbled together to fund her heroin habit (1981’s Drama of Exile, 1985’s Camera Obscura); and famously unlistenable, including the two albums reissued here. A change in mood and hardening of attitudes had scuppered the pie-eyed optimism of the summer of love, and had turned even the cynical, bitchy world of the Factory a shade darker: a few months before work on The Marble Index commenced, Warhol had barely survived a murder attempt. The rest of The Marble Index and Desertshore seem to exist exclusively in a world of Nico’s own creation, detached and incomparable (Cale subsequently suggested that her music “makes more sense in terms of advancing the modern European classical tradition than it does as rock or folk”).

Get the Android app