Album Reviews

Laura Nyro’s most personal, mature and intense album of love’s struggles proved to be the stopping point for many fans of the earlier gospel-y good time Nyro who sung “Stoned Soul Picnic,” “Eli’s Comin’,” “Wedding Bell Blues,” “Stoney End,” and even “And When I Die,” which was celebratory despite the song’s morbid title.

While New York Tendaberry includes a healthy dose of Nyro’s uptempo gospel-piano stomp on songs like “Save the Country,” the album’s two openers “You Don’t Love Me When I Cry” and “Captain For Dark Mornings” are intensely personal confessionals that along with much of side two, preclude Joni Mitchell’s Blue by a few years.

The echoey, distant production produces an unusual sonic and tonal perspective, but knowing Roy Halee, who co-produced with Nyro and engineered it was not accidental. Nyro and piano are bathed in a controlled reverberant field occupying a small, distant but well focused field.

Nyro anchors the instrumental backdrop on piano with other instruments, especially treated horns similar to what Halee got for The Byrds on Notorious Byrd Brothers.

Most of the other instruments are presented in the same distant reverberant haze, which causes a midrange glare and overload if you play this record too loud.

It’s meant to be played at a relatively low level, probably to increase both the intimacy and the isolation. Then the purity shines through and the dynamic musical accents orchestrated by Jimmie Haskell (incorrectly spelled “Jimmy” on the jacket) jump without hesitation out of the mix.

As you might imagine, few buyers of this record in 1969 got to hear it as intended in the studio, considering the cheap record players of the time and the so-so quality of the vinyl by 1969.

This reissue betters the original in terms of clarity, dynamics, extension and especially background quiet. The Pallas pressing is dead silent.

If you don’t know this record or the late Laura Nyro’s music and you’re a Joni Mitchell Blue fan, this one’s for you, though don't ask me what a "Tendaberry" is.