Laura Nyro

Christmas And The Beads Of Sweat

COLUMBIA 1970, DOWNLOAD £7.99

You say: “Passionate, unique …equal to Kate Bush’s best.” Paula Murphy, via e-mail The last of the triptych of originals considered peak Laura, guided by co-producers Arif Mardin and Felix Cavaliere, this album traversed two extremes. First, the positive bookends of Brown Earth (“White dove’s gonna come today!”) and arguably the finest version of King-Goffin’s salutation to NYC and song itself, Up On The Roof. Second, Nyro’s darkest forays into the city’s underbelly. Her young cousin’s accidental OD triggered Been On A Train, alongside two lengthy opuses, Map To The Treasure (the treasure being “pretty medicine”, likely heroin again) and the subdued, smouldering Christmas In My Soul, Nyro’s first ‘protest’ song with a namecheck for the wrongfully imprisoned Chicago Seven.