LAURA NYRO

1966: More Than a New Discovery. 1968: Eli and the Thirteenth Confession. 1969: New York Tendaberry. 1970: Christmas and the Beads of Sweat. 1971: Gonna Take a Miracle (with Labelle). 1976: Smile. 1977: Season of Light (live). 1978: Nested. 1980: Impressions. 1984: Mother's Spiritual. 1990: Live at the Bottom Line. 1993: Walk the Dog and Light the Light. 1997: Stoned Soul Picnic: The Laura Nyro Anthology.

Laura Nyro grew up and was inspired by pop music in the years BB
(before the birth of the Beatles). Eli and the Thirteenth Confession offers a one-stop showcase of things that were charming from that era: sweet girl-group vocals and harmonies; Brill Building meets Broadway melodies; lounge-like tempos; sophisticated, cool-jazz, chord coloring with bluesy tonalities; and up-tempo gospel fervor. (Gonna Take a Miracle pays homage to this era with interpretations of classic covers). Nyro's "disastrous" performance at the Montery Pop Festival shouldn't have been surprising; as a octave jumping and multi-tracked harmonies haven't transferred well onto the concert albums she's released. Nyro's bouncy meters, as well as the subtlety of her slow-moving ballads, had become dated post-Liverpool. Her strengths have shown up best in the studio, where her wild talent and tonal over-spill could let itself go without breaking anything.

Many of her early songs were big hits by other artists: "And When I Die" (Blood, Sweat and Tears), "Eli's Coming" (Three Dog Night), "Sweet Blindness" and "Wedding Bell Blues" (5th Dimension), "Stony End" (Barbara Streisand). This success should have cleared the way for a long line of musical endeavors, but Laura Nyro wasn't the most ambitious of talents: she recorded very few albums of original material. After New York Tendaberry her music became less commercial and more personal. In interviews, Nyro cited jazz as her main influence. The jazz connection is most rewarding on Smile, which is grandly concocted around some of Atlantic's finest session men (Will Lee, Chris Parker, John Tropea, Joe Farrell, Richard Davis, Huey McCracken, Bob Babbit, Alan Schwartzberg, and Michael Brecker). Smile contains some of Nyro's sharpest lyrics and melodies. She leads the band into modal territory for a one-of-a-kind achievement.

There are times when Laura Nyro's proclivities are a little eccentric - like, for instance, the passing voice she uses for almost all of Christmas and the Beads of Sweat. At other times her melodies seem listless as they grope their way towards form. By Walk the Dog and Light the Light she came close to being just another MOR ballad writer and a victim of a prosaic humanism. Much of her later work was influenced by New Age feminism and she may not have always done the genre justice. Sweet Blindness, the anthology, is heavily stacked towards the early years.

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