Nina Simone - Pastel Blues

Pastel Blues, released in 1965 on Philips Records, is a record built almost entirely on stripped-down tension and raw nerve, and its most striking moment shows up right at the start. "Be My Husband," written by Simone's then-husband and manager Andrew Stroud, is sung completely a cappella, just Simone's voice, her own handclapping, and a lone hi-hat for accompaniment. It's a stunning demonstration of how much weight she could carry with almost nothing behind her, and the song later found new life when Jeff Buckley covered it as "Be Your Husband" on his posthumous Live at Sin-é release.

That same spare intensity runs through the rest of the album. Simone pays direct tribute to Billie Holiday with covers of "Tell Me More and More and Then Some" and "Strange Fruit," the latter one of the most harrowing anti-lynching protest songs ever recorded, delivered here with a restraint that makes its horror land even harder. The album closes with a ten-minute, gospel-charged rendition of "Sinnerman" that stands as one of the most explosive performances in her entire catalog, building from a simple traditional spiritual into a full-blown tour de force.

As a singer, pianist, and civil rights activist who moved fluidly between classical, jazz, blues, folk, gospel, and pop, Simone used Pastel Blues to show just how far a nearly bare arrangement could carry raw emotional force, and it remains one of the most quietly devastating records in her discography.

This vinyl LP pressing brings one of Simone's most stripped-down, powerful albums back to the format.