Pop Music Reviews : Nyro Fiddles With Slogans, Buzzwords

During the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Laura Nyro was a Garbo-like figurine, caught in a maelstrom of self-obsessed imagery that rode on a helter-skelter melange of classic R&B;, pop, jazz and show-tune melodies. She was the dark urban madonna playing stream-of-consciousness art/soul. Today’s Madonna was among Nyro’s worshipful audience on Friday at the Wiltern Theatre, and the object of adoration was a calmer, less melodramatic performer as she followed up on her surprising comeback of last year after a decade of performance inactivity.

In her new songs, Nyro has replaced a personal mythology with slogans and buzzwords about Indian issues, ecology, animal rights and radical feminism. Arrangements of her older songs were tailored to avoid the high notes of her youth, and her idiosyncratic stops, starts and tempo shifts were smoothed out by her crackerjack quartet. But Nyro’s vocals are warmer and less strident, and when she encored, alone at the piano, with songs from her youth like an achingly poignant “Dedicated to the One I Love,” one heard the passion and the poetry that inspires cults. Nyro appears at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano tonight.