Customer Reviews

Eli & The 13th Confession

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Laura Nyro tends to elicit extreme responses from her listeners -- you tend to either love her or hate her. Eli and the Thirteenth Confession is like the litmus test for Nyro's music. If you love it, you're prepared to delve into the rest of her catalogue, and it's the one album to get (aside from the two-CD greatest-hits set Stoned Soul Picnic) for an introduction to this idiosyncratic, elusive singer-songwriter.

Eli and the Thirteenth Confession is one of Nyro's most consistent albums. Opening with the merry strains of "Luckie" and "Lu", carrying through with the floating "Stoned Soul Picnic" (possibly her most famous song), pop delight "Sweet Blindness" and the deep-cutting "Poverty Train", the album is one of the most even-strengthed in Nyro's oeuvre. Her swooping voice can often overreach itself (as on "Timer", with that grating high-register intro) and she does have a panache for melodrama, but the honesty of the emotions and Nyro's youthful abandon (she was, after all, 21 when she made this) combined with true musical ability make the songs seem genuine and heartfelt.

Laura Nyro was unique among the singer songwriters of the late 60s/early 70s. Although her records were often to be found in the folk bins, she was really more influenced by Motown, 50s doo wop, Broadway and jazz. Her natural experimentalism, I'm certain, inspired Joni Mitchell and other "folk" artists to stretch beyond the confines of acoustic guitar-based balladry.

Eli & the 13th Confession left critics and audiences of the era either awestruck or just plain befuddled. The fevered singing, the sudden tempo changes, the obscure lyrics all made for a startling and unique "listening experience." That much of her music would have a wide appeal was made evident by the fact that other artists would have hits with songs like "Stone Soul Picnic," "Sweet Blindness" and the title track. But once you've come to know and love Laura's original versions, it's hard to understand why it wasn't she herself who burned up the charts in '68 and '69.

There seems to be some disagreement among fans about whether this release or its follow-up "New York Tendaberry" is the superior work. My gut feeling is that this release is,at least, the better introduction to Laura's work. Beyond that questions of superiority are moot. Both albums are impressive works of art by one of the great songwriters and SINGERS of the era. In fact, all of Nyro's recorded work is worth investigating. She was the genuine article.

It's surprising and sad that Laura Nyro has become a kind of cult artist - adored by a few, unknown to most. In the late 60s, when she was barely out of her teens, everyone knew she was a genius, and everyone rushed to cover her songs. Maybe that was the problem. Barbra Streisand tried to sing "Stoney End" to escape her MOR image and sound hip, and just sounded silly ( Streisand has a gorgeous voice, but hip she has never been.) The Fifth Dimension made "Stoned Soul Picnic" sound bland. And Blood, Sweat and Tears added a cowboy schtick to "And When I Die" that is just plain embarrassing. Never has a composer been worse served by the artists who covered her work.

You just have to hear the originals, which blend pop, jazz, r&b, gospel, rock, folk and just about every other genre of popular music into an organic whole. I don't think there's ever been another singer-composer in pop music who was as aware of her musical roots as Laura Nyro was. Certainly there's never been one who used those roots so effectively.

She's as brave and inventive a singer as Van Morrison, as lyrically interesting as Joni Mitchell, and musically, she has no peer.

With many artists, a "best of" or "greatest hits" collection is the best place to begin. But in the case of Laura Nyro, "Eli and the Thirteenth Confession," her second album, is a better choice. "Stoned Soul Picnic" - her "best of" collection - is terrific, but Nyro was so original that I think you have to educate your ear on some of her more accessible stuff before you can be ready to listen to her later music.

Not every song on this album is perfect. Nyro was barely in her twenties when she made it, and as she struggles to stay in tune on "Timer" and "Woman's Blues," her youth and inexperience show. But most of the songs are wonderful, and "Sweet Blindness," "Poverty Train," "Eli's Coming," "Emmie," and " Stoned Soul Picnic" are nothing short of brilliant. (Just forget you ever heard the Fifth Dimension.)

I've been listening to this album since it came out more than thirty years ago and I haven't tired of it yet.

When this album was first released in 1968 as an LP--remember those?--it had a high-quality lyric folder infused with a haunting perfume. The album truly deserved such special treatment.

Of the thousands of albums I have owned and appreciated, I rate this album in the top five of all time. Like all great works of art, it is timeless. If anything, its greatness becomes more apparent with each passing year.

Though other famous musicians and vocalists have "covered" many of the songs on this album and thereby enhanced their own careers, there was only one Laura Nyro. Her lyrical genius is surpassed only by her amazing vocal expression range. In my humble opinion, Laura Nyro was the greatest female poet and vocalist of the 20th Century.

Eli & the 13th Confession is the second of 13 albums, and is clearly the best. It is a masterwork--not only in composition and performance, but in arrangement, engineering, and presentation as well. The arrangements by Charlie Calello--a genius in his own right--enhanced Laura's fluid tempo and rhythm changes, and artfully framed her unique voice.

I cried the day they announced Laura Nyro's death. This album is why I cried. Five stars are not nearly enough!

"Eli and the 13th Confession" is one of the forgotten masterpieces of the sixties. Laura's voice and songwritting are at the peak of her powers and most albums of that period sound pale and dated by comparison. Laura Nyro never got her due. She beleived that she was booed at the Monterey Pop Festival and lived in seclusion and rarely made live apperances after 1968. I have watched out-takes of the Monterey Pop film and I swear she is not being booed but is well received by the crowd. It is true that Laura was a fish out of water at Monterey, the Madonna dressed in black singing the horrifying "Poverty Train", in contrast to mod-gone-psychedelic spirit of the festival. The lush beauty of "Eli and the 13th Confession" with it's jazz/blues orientation and flawless production values is unlike any music that came out of that era. Laura's lyrical genius reflects her beloved Manhattan like the novels of Dickens mirrored industrial London. She tells stories of theives, hustlers, junkies and lost love in parables with sly biblical references and boundless wordplay. Her over-dubbed vocals have an unearthly quality of a choir of angels. All of her songs contained well crafted musical hooks which showed her admiration of of the Brill Building writers and Phil Spector's girl group hit factory. Her albums "New York Tendaberry" and "Christmas and the Beads of Sweat" followed this album, but it was impossible for Laura to find her muse as she did on "Eli". For Laura's fans, I would like to also recommend her last album before her death, "Angel In the Dark" which recaptures some of the fire and beauty of her late sixties/early seventies work.

I am old. I first listened to this record in 1969. At the time Hendrix, Joplin the Doors and Cream filled my ears. A junkie that I met played me the record and it sang to my soul -- immediately and completely. It still does (as do all Nyro records).

The production on this record is dated today (it was cheesy back then too -- remember, Columbia had "another Streisand" on its hands). The songs and singing transcend the production as they transcend the thirty-plus years that have come and gone since the original recording. These are still among Laura Nyro's finest songs and performances.

Artists of varying talents have come and gone since this recording. I read an interview with Joni Mitchel a few years back and she said that it was she "and Laura Nyro" that started the whole female singer/songwriter genre. She is almost right. It would be two years before Joni Mitchel would make a record with emotional depth on the same planet as that of Ms. Nyro (Blue). Joan Osbourne can get close as can Shawn Colvin (occassionally) and Melissa Ethridge.

If you "use" your art for escapism then don't buy this record. If you prefer to become a changed and charged human being after spending forty minutes with a recording -- then this is one of the finest ever made -- don't let a few smaltzy trumpets put you off ...

How this album is not more well known than it is, I will never know. In England, where I am from, I don't know anyone that has heard of her.
It is sheer genius. A totally original folk meets gospel opera. This is the first Nyro album I have purchased. The mood is upbeat and just the thing for a Sunday morning or anytime you feel like singing along or being cheered up. Her voice is a sleigh ride of peaks and valleys and her lyrics poignant and heartfelt whilst the severe chord changes sustain a musical interest. She is totally absorbing. Whilst listening to this album you get the feeling you are almost hearing someone singing in the shower, uninhibited and unaware you are there. There is no polish, just raw melodies and anthems that capture your imagination. Think of Carole King meets Motown and it gives you a bit of an idea of the style of the album but nothing can prepare you for how great it truly is. Poverty train is my favourite track as I love the deep lyrical content. These are all tracks that fit together perfectly as an album and I would recommend this rather than listening to them individually in compilations as it deserves to be savoured it was made.
Buy this album and play it loud.

...if you love music, per-i-od, and it does not bother you to get a recording made in the sixties (my two cents is that music is 'new' the moment it registers in the ears and to the brain cells, 'nonenjoyment' of certain types and genres is a matter of cultural conditioning. What's an 'old song' when it's 'new' the moment you hear it?)--Laura Nyro is the artist, this CD or, "New York Tendaberry", or "Gonna Take a Miracle" with Patti and the Bluebells are what you should get. I happen to like this one because it has the jams I'm most familiar with, and I love the poetry of "The Confession". Her songs are like folky gospel blues, like an old soul singing from a young woman's body. What a songwriter, what a singer, what an artist she was...

Why is Laura so unknown? Why is she despised by many? And why is she regarded with indifference by the rest?

Because quite honestly, she was able to get so close to her center, her soul, her inspiration, and herself that she throws others for a loop.

Eli & The 13th Confession is the album for all moods and all time. Melodic, instramental, and lyrical prowess which has been copied and emulated by almost all artists after whether they know it or not (Rufus Wainwright, Tori Amos, Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, Kate Bush, Portishead).

Laura Nyro was truly the 1960's link in the Tin Pan Alley songwriting tradition, tracing its roots back to the era before Gershwin. By the 60's, Broadway had become largely obsolete; jazz, once the predominant form of popular music, had taken a back seat to rock and roll; America's musical landscape was changing. There was only one artist who was able to take the influences of the jazz and Broadway traditions and fuse them with a contemporary sensibility, adding to it a compositional uniqueness that can be found nowhere else. That artist, of course, was Laura Nyro, and the album that best displays the peak of her talent is Eli & The Thirteenth Confession. No matter how many years pass, this distinct collection of songs remains fresh. Give it a listen; it just might change your life. It changed mine!