Laura Nyro

Laura Nyro is one of the most talented singer-songwriters to emerge from the flourishing New York scene of the Sixties. Yet her fame has always fallen well short of her merits. She never had a hit single or a gold record, while her songs – from “And When I Die” to “Stoned Soul Picnic” to “Wedding Bell Blues” – made the fortunes of other artists, among them Three Dog Night, Peter Paul & Mary, BS & T, Barbra Streisand, Julie Driscoll & Brian Auger with the Trinity, and the Fifth Dimension. Only after her death – from ovarian cancer on April 8, 1997 – did she receive the recognition she deserved. So much so that today she is cited as a reference point by a host of singer-songwriters (from Jane Siberry to Lisa Germano, from Suzanne Vega to Tori Amos, who perhaps remains her most worthy heir).

If one were to try to trace the "historic" coordinates of the modern female singer-songwriter tradition, chances are the choice would fall on three albums: Tapestry by Carole King (1971), Blue by Joni Mitchell (1972), and indeed Laura Nyro's Eli And The Thirteenth Confession (1968). A refined and complex work, this double LP is a collage of poetry and sonic innovation, brought to life through Nyro's piano and her blues-soprano voice, capable of expressing soul, jazz, gospel and folk feeling in turn. It's a formula born from the fusion of the various influences shaping the New York music scene in the mid-Sixties: the Brill Building sound and Carole King's confessional songbook, the gospel of Harlem churches and the jazz of Greenwich Village clubs, Black blues and the wild poetry of the Beats and Dylan, Motown music and the doo-wop vocal groups singing on street corners. But Laura Nyro's musical and poetic universe also embodies the dream of a whole generation of "freaks," the dream of sexual liberation and rejection of bourgeois convention.

Eli And The Thirteenth Confession thus set a new benchmark for women in the Sixties: that of the complete singer-songwriter, one who writes, sings and "lives" her own songs in the first person. A concept album about a girl's evolution from adolescence to adulthood, the Eli songbook is a daring blend of jazz, soul, folk and rock. It's a sequence of aching ballads, tinged with melancholy. Laura Nyro's refined melodies echo the finest work of Burt Bacharach, Hal David, and George & Ira Gershwin. The arrangements, always imaginative and elegant, are elevated by her clear, siren-like voice, more gospel than folk in character, and by the lyrical intensity of her lyrics. Her troubled self-examinations speak of love, of inscrutable romantic illusions, of lonely women and sensual desires. They are pain and joy of living, hope and alienation, neurosis and utopia.

But beyond writing lyrics, Nyro was above all a gifted composer: "Eli's Coming" and "Stoned Soul Picnic", for instance, boast virtuosic piano arrangements, while folk influences blend with soul/blues on the seductive "More Than A New Discovery", the driving "Luckie" (where the instruments almost seem to mimic someone's footsteps) and the aching "Poverty Train", a mournful piece for electric guitar, flute and percussion dealing with poverty and marginalization. It's likely from tracks like this one that Jane Siberry would later draw inspiration in designing her own "atmospheric" arrangements. Another piece decidedly ahead of its time is "The Confession", which alternates constant tempo shifts poised between blues and jazz, and offers one of Eli's most sensual revelations: "Love my lovething/ Super ride inside my lovething/ You may disappear/ But you'll be back I swear". But ambition is also on full display in the polyphonic, "Wilson-esque" "Once It Was Alright Now (Farmer Joe)", a sort of avant-garde prototype for Paul McCartney's "Band On The Run".

The lyrics are often dramatic, as in the ballad "Lonely Women", where Zoot Sims' blues sax steps into the dialogue between piano and voice, or in the anthem to alcoholism and disillusion that is "Sweet Blindness", or again in "December's Boudoir", a meditation on temptation and Catholic guilt. But there's also room for small everyday stories, like "Timer", Laura's ode to her cat. The album's only flaw, perhaps, is a certain "sixties" pomposity in Charlie Calello's arrangements, tangible, for example, on a track like "Lu".

Although it didn't achieve major commercial success, "Eli and the Thirteenth Confession" put the Bronx-born pianist firmly on critics' radar. And, as usual, it yielded plenty of hits for others: "Sweet Blindness" and "Stoned Soul Picnic" would be covered by the 5th Dimension, "Eli's Comin'" by Three Dog Night. But deep down, that suited the shy, romantic Laura Nyro just fine.

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03/11/2006