ALBUM REVIEW: New Laura Nyro Box Set is Her Most Complete Yet

Singer-songwriter Laura Nyro, beloved for her introspective lyrics and rich vocals, left us far too early when she died at 49, following a struggle with ovarian cancer. Now, a 19-CD limited edition boxed set, Hear My Song, honors Nyro’s musical legacy and traces her evolution as an artist. The set includes newly remastered versions of Nyro’s 10 studio albums, six live albums—including two previously unreleased live recordings from 1993 and 1994 at New York City’s Bottom Line—as well as Nyro’s demo tapes (released in 2021 under the title Go Find the Moon) and a CD of rare alternate and live versions of songs.

Starting in 1967, with her debut album More Than a New Discovery (later re-issued in 1969 and 1973 as The First Songs), Nyro released a new album every year through 1971. More Than A New Discovery introduced listeners to a soulful singer-songwriter who evocatively plumbed the tangled emotional depths of human relationships. On each of her next four albums—Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, New York Tendaberry, Christmas and Bead of Sweat, and Gonna Take a Miracle—Nyro continued to develop her songwriting, singing, and playing as a young artist at one with her instruments (piano and voice) and an innate sense of phrasing. Nyro had an incredible ability to live within the sonic universe of her songs and capture musical nuances with her delivery.

In 1971 Nyro stopped recording—in large part because she refused to pursue the path to celebrity her label wanted her to follow—and didn’t release a new album for five years. Her next album, Smile, came out in 1976. Between 1978 and 1993, Nyro released only three more studio albums—Nested, Mother’s Spiritual, Walk the Dog, and Light the Light. Nyro recorded Angel in the Dark in 1994 and 1995, but it was not released until after her death (in 1997), in 2001.

The Hear My Song box set includes mono and stereo versions of Nyro’s first two albums: More Than a New Discovery and Eli and the Thirteenth Confession. In addition to the 19 CDs, the set features a colorful book with liner notes by Vivien Goldman, remembrances from artists and friends (including Jackson Browne, Lou Adler, and John Sebastian, among others), and many previously unseen photographs.

Several tracks from Nyro’s first two albums such as “Goodbye Joe,” “And When I Die,” “Wedding Bell Blues,” “Sweet Blindness,” “Stoned Soul Picnic”—feature the singer’s soaring vocals set against a luxuriant backdrop of Broadway-like tunes, jazz, rhythm and blues, and folk. Others, such as “Eli’s Coming” or “Billy’s Blues,” build slowly into cinematic and atmospheric meditations on the ambivalence of relationships. With Gonna Take a Miracle, released in 1971, Nyro returns to the doo wop of her street-corner singing youth. She’s joined by Labelle on handclapping versions of “I Met Him on a Sunday” and swaying versions of “You Really Got a Hold on Me.”

1976’s Smile signals a shift toward funk and groove with free form jazz album opener “Sexy Mama” and “Money,” which comments on the money-grabbing nature of the music industry. On Nested (1978), Mother’s Spiritual (1984), and Walk the Dog and Light the Light (1993), Nyro’s songs grow more introspective, focusing on spirituality, motherhood, death, even as many of them take up political themes—including “‘Lite a Flame (The Animal Rights Song)” and “The Right to Vote.”

The live albums included in this set capture the intimacy of Nyro’s performances and the ways she allows her audiences to enter into the sonic spaces of her songs. And previously unreleased albums of the 1993 and 1994 Bottom Line shows, here titled The Loom’s Desire, are especially captivating.

In some ways, Hear My Song is for Nyro fans looking for completeness in their collections. Just three years ago, when 2021’s American Dreamer, an 8-LP boxed set containing seven studio albums and an album of live recording and rarities, was released, it appeared as if we might then have a complete collection of Nyro’s music. In other ways, though, Hear My Song gives Nyro’s listeners and devotees a treasure trove of her music, allowing for countless hours of listening to the nuances and creative brilliance of Nyro’s songs. Nyro completists will certainly want to own it, though others with a more than passing interest in Laura Nyro will also value it as an archive of one of our most enduring singer-songwriters.

Laura Nyro’s Hear My Song: The Collection, 1966-1995 is out Dec. 6 via Madfish Music.