Nico
Album: The End
Label: Universal/Island
Tracks: 17
Website: http://www.islandrecords.co.uk

Arguably the album that fixed Nico in the public imagination as the godmother of Goth, the doomed ice queen singing hosannas to some murky myth from her dark cave. By 1974, fellow former Velvet and producer John Cale apparently felt the need to pander to her rep as the lost Valkyrie and persuaded her to end three years of silence interrupted only by press rumour and speculation by recording an album that played right into their hands.

Enlisting the help of Roxy Music's Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera, he captures Nico (and let's not forget her harmonium) in myth-making form. For the most part it's pretty bleak stuff - Eno's synth fighting manfully against that harmonium and Cale adds piano as Manzanera lashes the whole thing with his guitar strings. The album closes with the German national anthem, which she delighted in dedicating to terrorist Andreas Baader when performing in concert.

However, all these years later, once the myth has had time to settle, die down and be rediscovered a few times, there are moments of genuine and touching beauty. You Forgot To Answer, about seeing Jim Morrison on the day of his death, presages her stark treatment of The Doors' cut that gives the album its title; while the opening track, It Has Not Taken Long belies the ultimate Nico myth - that she could only sing monotone.

A second disc of largely previously unreleased material includes 1971 and 1974 Peel Sessions and a 1975 set from The Old Grey Whistle Test.

Boy, if those fey little indie-folk princesses with acoustic guitars get a load of this, we could be in for a few interesting second albums.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk