Laura Nyro - Season of Lights ... Review

Laura Nyro—mysterious, enigmatic, New York, high-school chum of folk-artist Janis Ian (who claimed Nyro reminded her of Morticia Adams)—was a singer-songwriter who toured with a band for the first time (as opposed to performing as a solo artist) in 1976.

In ‘68, Nyro considered doing lead vocals for rock group Blood, Sweat and Tears, who, the following year, brought acclaim to Nyro’s original “And When I Die”. But when that plan didn’t transpire, it seems like plan B was to realize her body of work more fully orchestrated. But working with a writer whose trademark style features rubato vocal stylings, unanticipated tempo shifts, and a wealth of emo off-kilter interpretations requires expert musicians....full text For Nyro purists, Nested is the pulp. For Nyro cultists and collectors, Season of Lights , is the blended, salt-rimmed aperitif....full text Bronx-born Laura Nyro was a jazz-poet white soul singer-songwriter years before Joni Mitchell and Rickie Lee Jones. She soon became known as a hit songwriter, as her tunes became hits for Peter, Paul and Mary, the Fifth Dimension, and others. After a traumatic appearance at Monterey Pop in 1967, Nyro recovered with a series of idiosyncratic, allusive, almost stream-of-consciousness LPs that were surprisingly successful. But she spent most of the next thirty years in retirement before her death in April of 1997, and her reputation is mostly built on what she accomplished in her late teens and early twenties. Nyro may be more noteworthy as a trailblazer than a composer or performer - despite her distinctive vocal style and soul-baring lyrics, I don't find her songs communicate to me anything like Mitchell or Jones do, partly because she can be so damn hard to understand.

There's a marvelous fan site with just about anything you could ask for about Nyro, from discography to photos to interviews. (DBW)...full text