116. Laura Nyro - Eli and the Thirteenth Confession (Match 1968)

1. Luckie*

2. Lu

3. Sweet Blindness*

4. Poverty Train

5. Lonely Woman

6. Eli's Comin'

7. Timer

8. Stoned Soul Picnic*

9. Emmie

10. Woman's Blues

11. Once It Was Alright Now (Farmer Joe)

12. December's Boudoir

13. The Confession

A-

This is the sort of thing I was hoping to encounter when I embarked on this project. Before I purchased my copy of 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die I had never even heard of Laura Nyro. It turns out she's a pretty big deal and enjoyed consistent low-key success and cult status throughout her career, but somehow she slipped under my radar. Which is a misfortune that has finally been redressed. 

Since I knew nothing about Nyro, I was looking forward to coming to this album. Of course all I had to go on was the cover, title, and the brief write-up in the Book. Based on said cover and title I was expecting a dark, weird album of proto-goth balladry. So when I hit play on Spotify and the joyous riot that is "Luckie" burst out of the speakers, I was gobsmacked. It's hard to describe the music on this album. I guess the best way I could would be to call it a sort of cubist soul. There are odd time changes, Nyro's voice yoyos through her register with almost reckless abandon, and the production and arrangement seems to draw on every trend then current in popular music. But it all holds together, because Nyro possesses a clear vision of what she wants her music to be, and a solid understanding of what makes a great song tick. So rather than coming across as proggy self-indulgence, the songs instead have a wonderful sort of careening quality, and everything follows on logically based on the emotional needs of the material. There's a sort of jazz quality to the music in this respect, although it would be stretch to call this music jazz. I guess a good modern point of reference would be a band like the Fiery Furnaces, who similarly managed to write killer pop numbers that sounded like five songs stitched together into one. The reissue also includes piano-and-vocal demos of several songs, and these show that the songs were all carefully worked-out and strong enough to stand on their own before being draped in the album's rich, beautiful arrangements.

Lyrically, Nyro presents a series of portraits of a sort of easy-going Bohemian way of life. There's sex (the way "Luckie" wanders through a series of lyrical labyrinths before coalescing into Nyro belting out "I'm gonna go get lucky!" is great). There's drugs (cocaine in "Poverty Train", booze in "Sweet Blindness", and pot in "Stoned Soul Picnic"). There's ruminations on womanhood and celebrations of friendship and romance. Honestly, the lyrics are probably the closest thing to a weak point this album has, but what Nyro lacks in complex insights she makes up for with inventiveness, humour, and great imagery. And that voice! Laura Nyro could probably sing the phonebook and make it sound riveting.

So all in all this is a pretty great album, and I fully intend to listen to more of Nyro's stuff. Albums like this make slogging through this project worthwhile.