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Impressions

On the strength of an inspiringly effusive review in a magazine, I bought Laura Nyro's album New York Tendaberry on cassette in 1988. It was neither the first nor the last time I'd acquired a record without having heard a note of it, but it was one of the most disappointing of those purchases: I hated it, and didn't spare Nyro another thought for decades thereafter.

In 2018 or so I heard her song 'Stoned Soul Picnic' on the radio and began to realise I'd been too hasty to dismiss her music just based on that single unhappy experience. Some YouTube searches ensued, and, fortuitously, not much later, a copy of her 1980 compilation LP Impressions fell into my hands at St. Mary's St. Collectables in Chepstow. 

I'm still not overly fond of 'Save The Country' or 'Captain Saint Lucifer' (the two tracks on the LP from New York Tendaberry) but like pretty much everything else on it. I'm especially partial to the opening run of songs on Side A: 'Wedding Bell Blues', 'Stoney End', 'And When I Die', 'Stoned Soul Picnic' and ''Sweet Blindness' but also enjoy some of the more idiosyncratic tracks on the other side, such as 'Map to the Treasure' (featuring Alice Coltrane on harp, and some particularly striking piano by Nyro herself) and 'Beads of Sweat' (featuring a Duane Allman guitar solo).

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