The End

Along with Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers, Neil Young's On The Beach, and Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue, Nico's The End is an album that surrenders to darkness with some of the most beautifully desolate human deterioration ever recorded. Released in 1974, Nico's fourth album found her collaborating with John Cale again. Like her two preceding albums Desertshore and The Marble Index, Cale gave her haunting dirges a natural inborn feel with rich old acoustic tones, undulating harmonium drones, dramatic piano touches, and spare cello notes. This time Brian Eno was brought in to contrast Cale's organic production with cold synthesizer sounds that helped haunted songs like "You Forgot To Answer" sound more ghostly and spectral — quite appropriate since her lyrics are about not being able to reach Jim Morrison by phone only to later learn that her Lizard King lover had died (hence the bleak cover/title track). The brooding "Innocent And Vain" is bookended with Eno's synths distorting and howling to sound like mass destruction and her rendition of the German national anthem "Das Lied Der Deutschen" is wonderfully disturbing.