Nick Drake”Pink Moon” (1972) Hannibal/RykodiscIf you care...

Nick Drake

“Pink Moon” (1972)

Hannibal/Rykodisc

If you care to speculate as to where Kurt Cobain might have headed artistically had he been able to fan enough of an inner spark to stay alive, it’s not unreasonable to hypothesize that, following his avowed desire to explore quiet, acoustic settings, and assuming further development as a guitarist and lyricist, he could have ended up with something like “Pink Moon.”

It is the third and last album recorded by Nick Drake, an unjustly obscure English singer-songwriter who died of an overdose of antidepressants in 1974, at the age of 26 (a coroner ruled it a suicide, but Drake’s friends and family produced persuasive evidence that his death was accidental). Helped by members of the leading British folk-rock band Fairport Convention and its producer, Joe Boyd, Drake emerged in 1969 with a flowing, hypnotic brand of folk-based pop employing strings and jazzy touches in a way that recalled Van Morrison’s landmark album, “Astral Weeks.” With “Pink Moon,” Drake pared his music to barest basics: his voice, his acoustic guitar and a bit of piano.

As his career went on, Drake grew increasingly alienated in his personal life and dejected by his lack of success; after “Pink Moon,” he gave up music for a couple of years before resuming songwriting near the end of his life.

“Pink Moon” comes across as a stark farewell, a brooding account of weariness and disappointment. It is self-pitying at moments, but they are redeemed by the sheer luster of the music. For the most part, “Pink Moon” is remarkable for Drake’s composure. He sounds as if he is simply beyond whining, beyond protest over grim, irreparable states of affairs.

Drake’s voice is unforgettable, a ghostly dream-murmur that eddies like the currents in a brook or the soft gusts of a temperamental breeze. His guitar playing is skillful and distinctive, full of shimmering, liquid rhythms, ticking, taut motion or lonely, lingering bell-tones.

Rarely has an artist expressed deep bitterness so gently as Drake does in songs like “Parasite,” “Things Behind the Sun” and “Pink Moon,” in which he prophesies a mystical apocalypse in slurry, cottony tones that are almost cheerful:

I saw it written and I saw it say

Pink Moon is on its way.

None of you will stand so tall,

Pink Moon gonna get ye all.

Elsewhere, Drake reaches for comfort, consolation and escape, introducing a muted yearning that brings a poignant shading to the album’s prevailing mood of spookiness and defeat. Even in its darkest, most haunted moments, “Pink Moon” is infused with a rare and strange beauty. Seldom--only the Alex Chilton of “Big Star’s Third” comes quickly to mind--has a pop musician haloed himself in such an alluring glow while mapping his own descent into despair.