LimeWire Music Blog

Nick Nicely is perhaps the ultimate musical cult hero — he released two singles in the U.K. in the early ’80s, both of which earned critical acclaim but gathered little commercial steam, and then he fell below the radar. Nicely’s mix of ’60s psychedelic influences and the sonic vocabulary of ’80s New Wave prefigured the work of artists like Robyn Hitchcock, The Three O’Clock, and XTC’s paisley alter egos The Dukes of Stratosphear, but it would take 22 years before anything more was heard from the British singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist. When the Psychotropia collection finally arrived in 2004, it included Nicely’s semi-legendary singles alongside a bounty of previously unreleased tracks, revealing that he had been working in seclusion for years, turning out material equal to his earliest output, but initially keeping it to himself. Today, Nicely is said to be working on an actual album of new material, but whether that comes to pass or not, we can thank our lucky stars that we have Psychotropia to keep us company, in all its psych-pop-soaked, synthesizer-laced, mind-bending, music-from-an-alternate-reality glory.