Live! The Loom's Desire

Disc 1
1	Oh Yeah, Maybe Baby 3:08
2	Dedicated to the One I Love 3:15
3	Wind 2:10
4	Lite a Flame (The Animal Rights Song) 3:31
5	Walk the Dog and Light the Light (Song of the Road) 3:07
6	To a Child 3:26
7	And When I Die 2:49
8	Japanese Restaurant Song 3:49
9	My Innocence/Sophia 2:27
10	Wedding Bell Blues 2:21
11	Art of Love 3:35
12	Emmie 4:29
13	Let It Be Me 3:01
Disc 2
1	Angel in the Dark 4:23
2	Gardenia Talk 2:52
3	Save the Country 2:39
4	Louise's Church 3:14
5	Wild World 2:36
6	A Woman of the World 4:16
7	The Descent of Luna Rosé 2:50
8	Broken Rainbow 3:52
9	Blowin' Away/Wedding Bell Blues 3:29
10	Trees of the Ages/Emmie 6:18
11	Ooh Baby, Baby 3:46

Barnes & Noble

Like Ol' Blue Eyes, the late, great singer-songwriter Laura Nyro did things her way. Performing live in the 1990s, Nyro turned her back on the standard backing band. Instead, she assembled an all-female vocal choir that harmonized behind her while she sang and played piano. The results on this luminous recording, culled from performances during 1993 and '94 at New York's Bottom Line (where Nyro gave annual shows), capture how successfully that uncommon ensemble sound fit Nyro's staunchly melodic compositions. Her talents are on full display on several of her own songs that became hits for others, such as "Wedding Bell Blues," "Blowin' Away," "Save the Country," and "And When I Die." Elsewhere, Nyro digs in deep to the beloved early rock 'n' roll and R&B songs that inspired her own work, turning in impassioned renditions of the Everly Brothers' "Let It Be Me," the Shirelles' "Dedicated to the One I Love," and Smokey Robinson's "Ooh Baby, Baby." Displaying her vibrant, expressive voice and the onstage intensity that endeared her to her fans, Nyro gives plenty of evidence here of why she remains so sorely missed. Steve Futterman

All Music Guide

Culled from recordings made at New York's Bottom Line on Christmas Eve in 1993 and 1994, just a few years before her passing, these two dates on Live! The Loom's Desire offer as intimate a portrait of Nyro as we are likely to ever get from a recording. Using only her piano and two different harmony groups, Nyro runs through material from her own recordings and from the street-corner doo wop singing of her childhood. 1993's group has a six-piece backing group, making the sound full of depth and warmth, giving a kind of holiday intimacy to the proceedings -- especially on tracks like Nolan Strong's "Wind" and "Dedicated to the One I Love." There are a few more recent tracks that offer her views on animal rights, but they are woven though her more well-known songs. The big winners on the first set are "Emmie," which is chilling in its sheer desire, and the gospel-like raucousness of "And When I Die." On the 1994 concert, with a smaller group -- just a trio -- the effect is more riveting; there is an immediacy here that offers no sentimentality at all. On tracks like "Save the Country," there is a conviction not heard before, even in Nyro. On "Broken Rainbow," passion and heartbreak drip like rain from the petals of flowers. Most of the music is more recent, but it plays exactly the same as it if it were recorded in her "prime." There was no period on Nyro's life as a songwriter that wasn't a prime (check out the medley of "Blowin' Away" and "Wedding Bell Blues"). The set closes with Smokey Robinson's "Ooh Baby, Baby," and it is the most fitting goodbye, a way of tenderly sending off the crowd into the night with all the wishes a holiday season has to offer, but also with the appreciation and gratitude that she was so well-received. There is no goodbye like the one that has no idea that there will be no more hellos, and that's how this set whispers to a close, with the promise of a tomorrow that never arrived. Thom Jurek

Billboard

Her incomparable musical resourcefulness is present throughout.