Customer Reviews

Mother's Spiritual

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While "Mother's Spiritual" is as far removed from "New York Tendaberry" as imaginable, where NYT was aggressive, sad, frantically emotional, and sometimes disturbing (though ultimately satisfying), MS is gentle, flowing, reassuring and nurturing. It's an exquisite piece of work with a continual flow, and it's a true shame that Columbia/Sony has not seen fit to release this title on CD. (It was only been released as a rare German import over a decade ago.)

I will be breif as the other reviews also state the case very well, but any fan of Laura's should own this CD. I have had it since the day it came out and it gets better with each succesive listen. Laura continued to make great music througout her carreer and this is one of her finest, most personal, works lyrically. However, it is the melodies that rival her greatest works and will continue to bury themselves into your skull until they rest within your soul. Let's face it, soul is what this beautiful and sensitive woman was ultimately all about. Her passing has been one of the most profound losses of my life. Some may think that strange as I never met the woman but her music always spoke passionately to me. That wonderful music is her legacy and any fan must own this album. It is discraceful that Sony has not seen fit to release this CD domestically but this Line import is priced reasonably so what are you waiting for ?

I've just started listening to pre-"Smile" Nyro, so I can see how people can be split between these two phases of her work. Her earlier work seems more ambitious and urban, while her later work is more melodic and nature-themed. It's unfortunate that the two best albums from her later period ("Nested" and "Mother's Spiritual") are so hard to find. It makes it difficult to see that her later period was just as worthwhile as her celebrated early albums.

Anyway, if you like Laura Nyro's latter phase (from "Smile" on), then this CD is a must. Get it while you can! It's the best work she crafted from this period. Every song has something very concrete to say in beautiful poetic language and, lyrically, "Mother's Spiritual" is Nyro's most open album. Several songs are about becoming a mother and dealing with motherhood and, as usual, there are a couple political songs and Nyro is not shy about what she thinks. However, I find that her straightforward, unpretentious presentation prevents any of these songs from becoming crabby public service announcements (like Joni Mitchell or other former sixites icons work seems to get).

However, good themes are nothing without good music and Nyro delivers all the way through the CD. All these songs are a joy to listen to. The overall tone of the record is very light and focuses on Laura's piano playing and voice, using the other musicians to fill out the sound and vary things somewhat.

On this CD, you will understand why people on the Bottom Line CD kept shouting for her to play "To a Child". What a heartfelt song! "A Free Thinker" speaks to following ones own path with tight musicianship and great harmonies. "Mother's Spiritual" is, in my opinion, Laura's most beautiful piece of writing and performing. These are my favorites, but there are few songs that don't feel very strongly about.

A wonderful, hard to find CD. If you like Laura Nyro, do not hesitate to pay the extra buck to snatch this up. There is no CD like it, and it is so worth the import price!

'Mother's Spiritual' was released in 1984, and stands as one of Laura Nyro's most consistent efforts. The overall sound renders a sort of sophisticated easy-listening experience, and the messages convey a pacifist, motherly, Mother Earth-loving dialog. There is an abundance of soft, smooth-flowing, gentle, soothing compositions, often supported with a jazzy, quick-strum electric guitar rhythm. While many of the songs do not exercise Laura's vocal cords as diligently as, say 'Billy's Blues', she is obviously in fine voice. In a unique twist, Laura credits herself with providing "harmonics", her own overdubbed background vocals on a number of tracks.

'Mother's Spiritual' is, at the time of this writing, one of the rarest and most expensive CD's being sold at Amazon. I used a similarly hard-to-find cassette tape to make this review. Not many of the songs can be found on other discs. In fact, studio versions of the title track and 'To a Child' are only available on a Japanese import CD called 'Premium Best'. Live versions of those two tracks, along with 'Trees of the Ages' and 'Sophia' can be found on a number of Nyro's late 1980's and later CD's, including 'The Loom's Desire', 'Live In Japan', and 'Live At the Bottom Line'. That means that only 4 of the 14 tracks are available in some format other than on this disc itself. Not a situation to make happy campers out of Laura's rather rabid fan base.

The best songs on 'Mother's Spiritual' are, for the most part, those Laura chose to include in her concert setlists. 'To a Child', capturing both the joys and trials of parenting ("so serene, read about us in a magazine, then why are we crying at the washing machine?"), became a fan favorite at Laura's latter performances, and with good reason: it is one of her finest compositions ever. 'Melody In the Sky' is an often jazzy mix of several tempo's, along with some soaring vocals from Laura. 'A Free Thinker' hawks individuality on the back of an intriguing melody with lyrics like "while hawks destroy and healers send joy". 'Roadnotes' is a smooth flowing river of a song, while 'Sophia' is the most fiesty track, finishing with an excellent guitar/dulcimer coda. Laura presents the title track solo on piano, with only a bit of violin support, and reveals herself as an old-school lyricist with lines like, "the ocean sings to me that love is always alive and part of thee".

'Talk To a Green Tree' and 'Trees of the Ages', introducing side two on the original vinyl version of the work, are probably the most generic tracks, although the former features a funky John Bristo electric lead guitar, and the latter a contribution from Todd Rundgren on synthesizer. Rundgren fleshes out the 1980's sythesizer sound once again on 'Man In the Moon'. The more upbeat numbers are Nyro's celebration of liberty, 'The Right To Vote' ("thank you sirs for the right to vote, the microwave and old mink coat"), and 'The Brighter Song' with it's piano-based, bouncy melody. 'The Wilderness', along with 'Late For Love', are two of at least five songs where Nyro adds her own background vocals, and both are more subdued, thoughtful compositions. 'The Wilderness' includes baby sounds (Laura's own child?) and compelling lyrics such as, "I don't want to crush the wilderness in you child, or the wilderness in me. How do we keep them both alive?". The baby sounds return in the brief 'Refrain' which in a reprise tips a hat to 'To a Child'.

As a previous reviewer noted, it's quite disappointing that two of Laura's finest mid-period works, 'Nested' and 'Mother's Spiritual' are basically unavailable to us. I would add Laura's mid-1970's live album, 'Season of Lights' to that list. Whoever is preventing the release of these recordings is keeping some of the finest music ever performed out of the ears and minds of the masses whom Laura touched as few performers can, and that's a crying shame. Laura's musical expression of her lifelong pursuit of liberty is in dire need of liberation.

I first heard Laura Nyro about 20 years ago on some station I picked up while driving through Jersey, which happened to play a whole side of "Eli and the 13th Confession".Although I'd never heard her, I guessed it had to be her, because it sounded just like Todd Rundgren, who tends to make people sound like him, and I knew they did a record together at one point. Follow me? Anyway, "Mother's Spiritual" was the record that they did together, not "Eli..", so it became obvious that she was the one that influenced him. He even wrote a song about her on one of his early records called "Laura."

Anyway, getting back to "Mother's Spiritual", her voice sounds more refined than her earlier stuff like "Eli and the 13th Confession", which seems to be universally considered a masterpiece, and to me, it sounds a little more in the direction of Joni Mitchell's "Hissing of Summer Lawns" and just as consistent. It's beautiful from beginning to end.

My favorite line happens to be "...why are we cryin' by the washing machine?," which someone referred to earlier, and when it slips back into that melody at the very end, it's just brilliant. On the tape that I listen to repeatedly, which I had to transfer from a crackly used record I found for $1.00, I made the end keep fading in a few times; the record's so beautiful I didn't want it to end. I guess I could say the same thing about Laura's career; the only time I got to see her play was through the window of a club while I stood outside in the rain, because I was $5.00 short for the cover charge. Still hurts to think about it.

Laura Nyro's "Mother's Spiritual" is a classic CD for me, one of my favorites. I was one of the "tribe" while Laura was alive, purchasing the LP on Columbia as soon as it was released and picked up the West German CD so I could soundtrack my time in the car, as I did this week. What an exquisite work this. I think 5 of these tracks are among Nyro's best. The opener "To A Child" is an exquisite homage to parents who get tired and still have to take care of the kids. When Laura breaks into the gorgeous hook on the chorus, "What is life? Did you read about it in a magazine? Silent lies never give you what you need; Is there hope for a mother and an elf on speed?" What a glorious description of those bundles of energy that children are! "Melody in the Sky" is another delightful track with the lovely percussion on the arrangement and Laura's passionate vocals, part hush, part wave, "Lover, I'm your friend and tonite your melody; and you own yourself; I belong to me." I once sent a CD to Bonnie Raitt with songs I'd hope she'd cover one day. My recommendation was "Free Thinker" which may not be the most melodically complex of Laura's tunes, but is one I connect with repeatedly. Laura's voice floats into the stratosphere, "You could shine your special light!" "The Brighter Song" is another fabulous gem that swoons to embrace you, "You are stronger, brighter, Your dream's a little wilder, Sister believe, sister believe in your happiness." "Mother's Spiritual" is Laura's anthem that is glorious, "Feel this love, my brothers and sisters, feel the season turn, she is the mother of time." The other tracks are also delights like "Sophia," "Man in the Moon" and "Late for Love." This set is nearing 25 years since it was first released. It is soothing to my soul. Bravo!

During the 1980s, Laura Nyro spent most of the time with her young son Gil, and "Mother's Spiritual" was the only recording she released between 1979 and 1988. Nested had been a commercial disaster owing to the "punk revolution" tightening playlists and leaving her without a media outlet, but "Spiritual" with hindsight came out at a much more favourable time with the emergence of such artists as Kate Bush and the Cocteau Twins who took much (whether consciously or not) from her masterpieces like Christmas and the Beads of Sweat.

Given this, and the development of college radio to counter the stifling restrictiveness of late 1970s commercial radio, it is hardly surprising that "Mother's Spiritual" fared better commercially than "Nested", briefly denting the Top 200 - though one does at times think it could have done better.

Since its release "Spiritual" has received a good deal of criticism from the press: for instance, the title song was described as an "MOR lullaby" by Q. This deterred me from taking serious interest in the album even when I first joined Laura Nyro sites on the Internet, and it is only recently that I have taken serious interest in the few tracks not found on compilations.

There is no doubt "Spiritual" lacks the sheer wonder one has playing through Laura's 1968 to 1971 albums with their ecstatic emotion and constant changes of tempo and volume. The mood throughout is quiet, even reflective and dreamy, and there is not that much of Laura's trademark piano. The sound is dominated by sparse, highly relaxed synthesiser and electric guitar flourishes. Even these, however, cannot make up for the deficiencies in some songs, such as "A Wilderness" with its out-of-place child-calls, and "The Brighter Song" and "Roadnotes" which are simply too devoid of feeling to be valuable.

However, Laura's newfound maturity does not make everything lost, because for the greater part of "Mother's Spiritual" her lyrical intelligence shines through in a surprising way. "A Free Thinker" and "Melody in the Sky" show her voice singing with gorgeous beauty, whilst the latter song has the added bonus of a superb lyric about female friendships. On the slower side, "Late for Love" and "Trees of the Ages" are truly dreamy yet touching, and the way Laura asks simple yet rare questions in the former song is fitting. "Man in the Moon"'s intro even captures some of the amazing softness of "Christmas and the Beads of Sweat", though Laura's age and reclusive lifestyle probably made it impossible for her to maintain it for the whole song - which still stands as a beautiful dream of a truly peaceful world.

"Sophia", which makes Laura's goddess religion explicit, furthers the mystical dreaminess seen in other parts of "Mother's Spiritual", but does not lack the dark tone of the slower tracks. "Talk To A Green Tree", despite its title, is about the difficulties working women face protecting and raising children, and what Laura says here is both ambivalent and remarkably intelligent. The third verse and chorus in particular has one of Laura's most stunning lyrics:

Listen pretty daddy
You can take my place
Childcare and home
Is no disgrace
But eight days a week
May wilt your wild flower
And after you've done it all big daddy
Be ready for the midnight hour

And you, society
You can never lead me
'Cause you don't seem to hear me
Gonna talk to a green tree...

The spare backing on the song, too, is so unpretentious that it has aged much better than most music from the 1980s. "To A Child", though tearjerking, has some of the touching beauty of the albums' best tracks.

The album's (and Laura's last) absolute masterpiece (with lyrics preserved by the Chicago Peace Museum) is "The Right To Vote". Featuring some of the few traces of Laura's earlier piano work, the song's simple, yet funky rhythm overlies a lyric that is dark yet pure fantasy. Written in an age when nuclear war and the threat of women being oppressed by fundamentalist religion seemed serious, Laura imagines a work free from the confines of patriarchy in a manner that recalls Elizabeth Gould Davis without being in anyway unfair to it. The way in which Laura, on this and lesser tracks, feels the need to withdraw from a decadent society should indeed have appeal outside the radical feminist movement.

All in all, even if some sub-par tracks do lessen its value, "Mother's Spiritual" stands as an impressive reminder that even in her retirement and without the dramatic mood changes that made her early work amazing, Laura Nyro was still very much a capable music force.

"A mother of an album" -- I read an interview a while back w/ Laura where she talked about the process of writing the songs for 'mother's spiritual.' When I consider that she would typically wake up in the middle of the night, after probably a stressful day of child rearing or what have you, and jot down lyrical snippets on the back of matchbooks (or sometimes even her hand), it's easy to see how it turned out to be such a mellow record..... sort of a peaceful refuge after the craziness of the day. When I think about the album in those terms, I tend to appreciate it to its fullest, and sometimes even consider it one of Laura's greatest achievements. Oftentimes, the melodies of 'spiritual' (if not the complete songs) will fly through my head for no reason at the strangest times........ maybe not as often as the blaring horns of 'dark mornings,' the gypsy trumpet of 'i am the blues' or the double guitar thrush at the end of 'my innocence,' but often enough.

I began listening to Laura Nyro when she first appeared in 1966. When she released Eli & The 13th Confession, she became one of the most magical singer/songwriters of her time. As she progressed through her career, she released some of the most remarkable music ever recorded in the rock genre. Mother's Spiritual is among her very best in my opinion. Right up there with Eli & The 13th Confession if I dare say. Disagree? It's my opinion, okay? I was lucky enough to find a copy when it was out of print, sitting in one of those discount CD racks at a gas station. I had never heard it but bought it and put it in my car CD player. It stayed there for weeks, nothing could displace it. The material on this album is some of the very best material she ever wrote and recorded. Sometimes, it is so beautiful it is emotionally overwhelming and it makes me smile to think that someone so remarkable has been a part of the song of my life. I know that many of us who loved Laura Nyro feel the same and place her music at the apex of rock. This one belongs with the best of her works. If you love Laura and have missed this one, get it.

I bought this in tape version on a fluke and was I totally knocked out. While I like Laura and her writing, her albums sometimes bored me (in an alliance w/ Monterray) and used to find myself straining to hear. NOT THIS ONE - It runs, it moves and she really swings in it yet it has the depth and sentimental value of her best and says an awful lot about a treasured subject - Motherhood - her statements are totally great.