Angel in the Dark: a Last Look Back
When I spoke to Laura Nyro in 1993, she had released what was then her last studio album, Walk the Dog and Light the Light. She told me then that in recent years, she hadn't been doing much songwriting, that she had been working on vocal technique and concentrating on being a single mom and raising her son in a lake community near Danbury, Connecticut. Her distaste for the music industry was clear.
"Not everybody likes dealing with the music business, certain aspects of the music business," Nyro told me then. "Some talented people can't cut it in the music business, because it's not appealing to them, and nurturing to them. I find it very natural and healthy to not always be dealing with the music business."
She would die of ovarian cancer in 1997, age 49. But before she did, she worked on another collection of songs that were released posthumously in 2001 on CD as Angel in the Dark by Craft Records. Half were originals, and half covers. Recorded in 1994 and 1995, it's also about half solo piano and vocals, with the rest tastefully augmented by musicians who had played with Nyro such as Randy Brecker (trumpet), Michael Brecker (sax), Will Lee (bass), John Tropea (guitar), and Bashiri Johnson (percussion).
Angel in the Dark was released on vinyl for the first time on the New Land label on April 25, 2025. It deserves a shout-out for not being a "special Record Store Day" release. It does have a specialty vinyl price, with Amazon asking $37.49, which seems the selling point for other retailers. It's a well-made album, pressed on 180-gram vinyl: It feels sturdy before you put it on the turntable. (Amazon throws in a free mp3.)
Nyro had prioritized parenting and working on vocal technique in the years before this record, so it's little surprise that none of her songs match her legendary streak in the 1960s and early 1970s, when covers of her tunes lit up Top 40 radio: "Stoned Soul Picnic" and "Wedding Bell Blues" by the Fifth Dimension, "And When I Die" by Blood, Sweat and Tears, "Stoney End" by Barbra Streisand.
Her spiritual longings are satisfyingly expressed by "Triple Goddess Twilight," a kind of quintessential Nyro title that she might have developed with more time. Listen to the way she shifts chord structures, leaps octaves, because she wants to, needs to, because it makes her happy. Her declared musicological range is "three octave mezzo-soprano," which is why majestic early songs such as "Eli's Coming" are so mind-blowing to hear now: She starts where other voices peak, and she just keeps pouring it on until ecstasy is achieved.
"Sweet Dream Fade" draws on strong soul roots, the opening notes hinting at Hall and Oates' "She's Gone." The track is elevated by the full band at maximum impact, especially an electric guitar solo by John Tropea that might have pleased the discerning ears of Steely Dan.
Laura Nyro. Courtesy of New Land Records.
Are the flowers speaking on "Gardenia Talk?" It's possible considering Nyro's synesthesia, hearing sound and seeing colors. You've heard Christoper Walken asking Blue Öyster Cult for "more cowbell" on Saturday Night Live? In the album notes, Randy Brecker recalls Nyro asking him for "more orange" on a solo. And bassist Lee remembers Nyro telling him: "Will, I would like this song to sound like an old wicker chair I have in the country." Perhaps a sound comfortable, but also beat up and rural?
The songs written by others sometimes recall the triumphant 1971 soul and R&B covers album Gonna Take a Miracle, featuring Nyro backed by the group Labelle, before they were famous. One thing that mystifies me is the sequencing of the album, in which a brief version of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles' "Ooh Baby Baby" does not segue directly into the Delfonics' "La La Means I Love You"; the two songs would have created a perfect medley, but are interrupted by a brief (barely two-minute) version of George and Ira Gershwin's "Embraceable You."
The covers are often casual, as if Nyro was at her home piano, tapes rolling, singing as her fingers do the walking, and talking. There is a quick visit to "Let It Be Me"; not sure if Bob Dylan's odd choice of this song on Self Portrait was passing through Nyro's mind. There's a long and leisurely rendition of "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," another visit to the Shirelles' territory represented by "Dedicated to the One I Love" more fully formed on the album with Labelle.
Two songs by Burt Bacharach and Hal David get the Nyro treatment: "Walk on By" summons Nyro's highest register, yet she finds a deeper darkness than even Dionne Warwick's deeply affecting version. The other, "Be Aware," shows Nyro's encyclopedic knowledge of 20th century song, as it's one of Bacharach and David's more obscure efforts, a kind of "timely for its time” tune written for a 1971 Streisand TV special.
The lively title tune bookends Angel in the Dark, as opening track and "Coda," the latter featuring just the song's refrain, chanted: "come back to me, come back." There's then a bonus track, Martha and the Vandellas' "Come and Get These Memories," solo piano and vocal again, and it left me wanting more everything: drums, horns, vocals. More orange, or green, or blue, or cowbell or wicker chair. More Laura. But I guess that was Nyro's way: to leave behind so many memories.
This article originally appeared in Wayne Robins’ Substack and is used here by permission. Wayne’s Words columnist Wayne Robins writes the Critical Conditions Substack: https://waynerobins.substack.com/.
0 comments