Thursday, April 16, 2009

Laura Nyro: Gonna Take a Miracle


Laura Nyro: Gonna Take a Miracle, originally uploaded by Stepale.

My favorite album cover. Look at that face. The woman was a genius. When I'm not listening to Laura Nyro every day (as I have been recently), I'm at least listening once a week. She's my favorite early Thursday morning music, hovering over the wet ink of the day's papers, sipping a warm coffee from home.

The image was taken by Stephen Paley, of whom I admittedly know very little, but that's only because of my recent discovery of his work. Shane MacGowan mentions this cover in his autobiography, which somehow gave a curious depth to the music of the Pogues.

And in this case, you can indeed judge an album by its cover. I can hear that look on her face in the music. Speaking of covers, this album, "Gonna Take a Miracle" (with backing vocals by Labelle) is a cover album of old soul and Motown tunes.

An essential album, unless you're crazy like Mackey and don't like the sound of her voice (is that because Marilyn McCoo sang so many Nyro songs with the 5th Dimension?).

2 comments:

the feeb said...

yeah, that is great. doesn't modern album artwork suck tho? fucking cd's ruined everything.

MO'SH said...

It's true. I like big art!