Boxed Sets and Year-End Lists

I enjoy year-end lists, if for no other reason than they highlight movies or albums I missed over the course of the year.  My favorite year-end list is at Brainwashed, with the key section (for me) being the reissues of the year and the boxed sets of the year.  From the Reissue list, I found out about the Nico Frozen Borderline: 1968-70 set, which includes two of Nico’s late 60s collaborations with John Cale, The Marble Index and Desertshore, with additional unreleased demos and alternate takes included for good measure.  From the boxed set list, I found out about Robyn Hitchcock’s I Wanna Go Backwards, which combines Hitchcock’s first two solo albums (Black Snake Diamond Role and I Often Dream of Trains), his later work Eye, and a two-disk set of unreleased, b-side, demo, and live tracks. 

Now, I’ve been a fan of Hitchcock’s since I was in high school in the mid-80s.  I had copies of his albums and his work with the Soft Boys, but somewhere along the line I misplaced them.  So the boxed set was great–a chance to get newly remastered versions of some of his best albums and a whole bunch of extra stuff to boot.  The Nico one, by contrast, was a stretch for me.  I knew Nico from the Velvet Underground, of course, but I’d never paid much attention to her solo work.  But while reading Simon Reynold’s Rip It Up and Start Again, I kept seeing her name pop up as an inspiration to post-punks from Wire to Depeche Mode.  So I was intrigued that two of her less well-known works would be released.  Hence, I picked that one up too.

So which set do you think I’ve been listening to more often?  Yep, it’s Nico.  The Hitchcock stuff sounds just like I remember it from the 80s; however, my taste in music has radically changed since then (I still love The Minutemen, but a lot of the other stuff seems dated to me).  It doesn’t have the freshness and edge that I thought it did–or perhaps it’s better to say that I don’t feel the same connection to that music that I once did.  I enjoy it, but I don’t want to listen to it over and over.

The Nico stuff, on the other hand, was new to me.  And, admittedly, it was a bit difficult to get into at first–the voice took a while to get used to.  But the music on the works (mainly by John Cale) and the astute lyrics (by Nico) really caught me off guard.  It’s fascinating works, far more intellectually richer than Nico’s reputation might otherwise suggest.  Works that mention Wordsworth (“The frozen borderline” refers to a poem by the big W) are few and far between, but Nico manages to capture the melancholy tones of European Romanticism in a way that is far more interesting than actually reading  Romantic poets like Shelly and Keats.  That set is a truly great listen–deep, moving, emotive, and enduring.

Note: originally posted 2/11/08