The Sentinel | Vancouver, British Columbia Canada | 02/22/2000
(4 out of 5 stars)
"...and delivers her most accessible work since CHELSEA GIRL. Clearly indebted to the Bowie/Iggy/Roxy/Kraftwerk school of oblique, decadent art-rock with nods to New Wave, disco, funk, electronica, and floating Byzantine exotica -- the penultimate DRAMA OF EXILE lives up to its name in spades. She now has Phillipe "Kilikini" Quilichini for a collaborator (instead of John Cale or Brian Eno) and together they conjure forth a protean piece of soundcraft with breezy arabesque synthesizers, cool jangly guitars, thumping beats, squiggly squealing saxophones, scything violins, and God-knows-what-else swirling in the mix. This Teutonic Moon Goddess is Brunnhilde back from the primeval Wagnerian funeral pyre...a spectral, sepulchral New Romantic banshee with a pocket full of mantras, mandalas, matchsticks, cryptograms, wormwood and mandrake...resurrecting Genghis Khan and Henry Hudson and leading you down the road from ancient Niebelungenland to glittering Vegas and "the boy with a wild smile like Bonaparte." As for the other songs..."Heroes" is surprisingly solid and epic and perhaps even a little more resonant than Bowie's original (her German-ness gives it an added poignance).... Although I dare say the utterly tuneless take on "I'm Waiting for My Man" leaves us a little queasy. MY CD booklet has some great pics of our Christa Pfaffgen -- a marble beauty wrapped in gossamer black -- draping her arm over a tombstone, posing with her son Ari, and falling asleep a la Warhol.Ahhhh...that imperious bearing...those eternal cheekbones...the hair once flaxen like an Aryan-uberfrau-schoolgirl now turned sable...and that luscious, sensuous mouth....MMMMMMM....WHAT A GORGEOUS AND GLORIOUS PHYSIOGNOMY! You can keep all your vapid teenage-junkie supermodels, THIS IS MYSTICAL NECROPHILIAC SEX APPEAL FOR THE AGES, BABY! Never mind Siouxsie Sioux...here's NICO, the once and future QUEEN OF THE GOTHS!"
Dramatic and noisy
E. A Solinas | MD USA | 07/05/2005
(2 out of 5 stars)
"Goth godmother Nico was always her best in front of a spare instrumentation section. Even in the Velvet Underground, her songs tended to be relatively simple and spare; when she departed the Underground, her songs became richer but still simple.
All that flew out the window with "Drama of Exile," a sickly match of Nico's talents with funk-disco art-rock. After the cy grandeur of albums like "The End" and "Chelsea Girl," this screechy disaster buries Nico's talents under a bizarre swirl of incompatible instruments. In other words, it's a mess.
"Ghengis Khan" starts with some thumping drums and squiggly synth. Okay, all right -- every artist has the right to evolve and go in different musical directions. But Nico's voice shows that this wasn't a good direction -- she sounds as distant and computerized as Britney Spears.
Were it only that song, then the album wouldn't be so bad. Unfortunately, the dark, computerized sound continues throughout "Drama of Exile," almost without reprieve. The worst moment is a wildly overproduced cover of the Velvet Underground's "Waiting For the Man," cluttered with sonic noise and robotic vocals.
A few of the songs, however, are more downtempo and simple. "Sixty Forty," "Sphinx" and the quietly swirling "Orly Flight" all have a less dancepoppy flavour, and allow Nico to take center stage. She still sounds rather robotic, but the jangly guitars and chaotic synth aren't taking over the song. At some points, she sounds completely natural.
But alas, the album isn't three songs long. Instead, it's burdened with a series of art-dance songs, which are overloaded with too many instruments playing all at once. And the greatest crime is that Nico herself is literally lost in the mix; her throaty, thick voice is rendered flat and sterile by overproduction.
"Drama of Exile" is perhaps the worst album of Nico's too-short career, a messy melange of musical trends that smothered her natural talents. Only for Nico completists."
NICO is a GENIUS
vivdesign@aol.com | New Yawk, New Yawk | 11/26/1998
(4 out of 5 stars)
"How can you not LOVE her? The music is brilliant, the voice is unlike any other. She's like a feminine man trying to be masculine and dangerous. A drag queen mafiaso if you will. And thats just her voice! My favorites are "Sixty Forty", her cover of Bowie's "Heroes", "Orly Flight", and "Genghis Kahn". Pure attitude, without any pretention."
That's the DRAMA of Exile
The Sentinel | 07/23/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Nico is usually asociated either with the Velvet Underground / Andy Warhol thing of the '60's, or else with the early Goth thing of Bauhaus in the '80's (even joining them for a live cover of Waiting For My Man). However, it's surprising how few people are aware of her work with the Faction- her band in the early '80's. While they only released two albums- this and Camera Obscura- both desreve to be remembered.
Drama Of Exile is not like anything that Nico had done before. It actually makes a very valiant effort to be pop; it fails of course, but it tries. Don't take that as an insult. Nico could no more fit into pop than she could fly under her own power, but boy could she ROCK!
The music is rock. It is very multi-ethnic simply because the band was multi-ethnic and each musician developed a clearly unique style of approach to his instrument. The drums are straight ahead with some aggressive patterns; the guuitar is high, thin and brittle with a distinctly middle-eastern flair (very cool); the keyboards are spare and avant-rock / art-punk (does that make sense?), while the bass is melodic with complex arrangements while still giving the songs a firm anchor.
By far, though it's Nico herself that makes the album wonderful to hear. Her voice on this album is closer in quality to the VU / Chelsea Girl days although there is a roughness (brought about sadly by years of excesses of all sorts). This lends the album a rich, three-diminsional quality that a better singer with a more sheltered "good, clean" life just could never touch. Her lyrics are as challenging as ever, though the music is far more accessable. Stand outs are 'Ghengis Kahn', 'Purple Lips',
'Sixty /Forty', 'Orly Flight', and her covers of the VU's 'Waiting For My Man' and Bowie's 'Heroes'- a song she sings with ginuine conviction and honest realism.
In the end, those two qualities are what this whole album is about. Fans of Nico that don't have this yet really should. Those just getting into Nico might want to wait until after they have 'The Velvet Underground And Nico' and 'Chelsea Girl'. Also recommended for fans of eclectic,experimental (though only slightly) and fusion music.
Oh yeah- and Goths. :)"
Nico's ode to the wanderings of life
Beketaten | Pangea | 03/27/2004
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Contrary to popular belief, Nico lost neither her voice, nor her talent for gripping and engaging tunes and words, in her later career. She may have pulled back a bit on her trademark harmonium, but that was used for any number of these songs on any live album of hers (of which there are many), you can find.This album is about Nico's many experiences, feeling like she had no particular home, and enjoying the wandering like a gypsy of sorts.The album starts with the stirring and altogether fantastic number "Genghis Khan", in which she muses on feelings of destiny to someone who she met, who is, whether literally or figuratively, thought of as the reincarnation of the title person. Whichever the case, it is applied to these serious, yet mystically portrayed emotions.
The second song, Purple Lips, is about miscommunication, loss, and feelings of coldness and bitterness. Nevertheless, the love survives through the song, and adds flavour to its dreamy percussion and synthesizer touches.
In "One More Chance", we find Nico musing, however cryptically (as usual ;), about the fate of a family, and various relationships. It discusses strength, uncertainty, and the need to wait out important turning points in life. The beat is driving and the melody another standout in this album. Something about her vocals adds the sort of unusual sense of hope and elevation that interjects itself even into her bleakest songs.
The next song "Henry Hudson", finds her by the river, representing a place of thought and heartbreak, yet a sort of steadfast devotion, casually played up by the funky, loose beat. A very cool song.
The next song "I'm Waiting For the Man" is a sly yet suitably burned-out sounding tale of the monotony of being a consumer in drug trafficing. It's a cover of one of the songs on the first Velvet Underground, that she herself did not get the opportunity to sing the first time. Unfortunately, it gives a sad reflection on her own life, but it too, has been part of her journey.
Another major standout track "Sixty/Forty", though not entirely clear as to the source of its numeric title, is a melancholy yet resolved musing on the nature of fame (fleeting, is is clear), and directly adressing the principles governing what changes one is going to allow to be made in their life, discussed, from her perspective as leaving the sentimentality of New York; "Will there be another time/...Another year/Another wish to stay?/...Will there be another word to say/Or do we have to give it all away?" The version here is good, however, the demo version on the "drama of exile" "remixed" album is far superior.
The theme of devotion to some kind of mystical or drving force of love etc, is readressed in this very Middle-Eastern sounding song, which speaks of one for whom she will wait for any amount of time, thoroughly steadfast in her lonliness.
The next to last song "Orly Flight", is a rather Indian sounding, calming song directly about her instances of travel, mroe specifically for touring purposes. It gives her the time to inspect her wishes of embracing the future and accepting all the events that bring her to this place [in life].
The last song, "Heroes", is a cover of a David Bowie song which was actually written about her in the first place. It's amusing to hear her intone "I...I will be king/And You...You will be queen" over the pounding, disco-like beats. But it's a very catchy and carefree sort of song about total involvement in a relationship, totally regardless of the stupidity of the surrounding world.
The Middle-Eastern rooted band add great effect to this album, especially with the electric guitar that is utilized so well.
My only complaint about this addition, was that it left out the two notable singles, the lovely/dreamy "Saeta", and the funky "Vegas".
However, those are easily on any of her best-of collections.
All in all, this is a terrific and thoroughly engaging musical journal through the ins and outs and the mystical emotions that pervade one's life in a kind of "exile" form the unnecessary elements that dog us, which we are to express."
Track Listings (9) - Disc #1
