Laura Nyro

Eli And The Thirteenth Confession

COLUMBIA 1968, DOWNLOAD £7.33

You say: “The best. Stoned Soul… + Poverty Train are on it.” Mark Peters, Twitter After the Verve stand-off, new manager Geffen delivered Nyro total artistic freedom with Columbia. Arranger Charlie Calello (architect of Sinatra’s Watertown) wove her multiple strands and compositional quirks into a distinct vision. Abandoning Broadway affectations, Nyro swung, rolled and swooned through pop levity (this LP’s Stoned Soul Picnic and Sweet Blindness reached US Numbers 3 and 13 respectively for The 5th Dimension) and unrestrained action, like the drug-fearing Poverty Train (“see the walls roar, see your brains on the floor”). Nyro began using “devil” to describe drugs and men; Woman’s Blues conflates God, thunder and desertion.