This album comes at the nicest time within Laura Nyro's career, for like most of the other performers that have cut a swath through pop music over the past couple of years, she's lately had to deal with those problems which naturally come with artistic growing up. Her last record showed very direct leanings toward a tired reliance on old faithfuls, and it must have ultimately motivated her to try something different. This album of Laura's interpretations of R&B classics is the result. And, if nothing else, Gonna Take A Miracle bears witness to the fact that Laura Nyro has the best record collection on Central Park West. She touches on quite a divergent span while remaining faithful to a single, very individual vision.

After all, when you open an album with "I Met Him On A Sunday," do "Dancing In The Street" and the Charts' "Desiree" right next to each other, toss up the reverse with "Spanish Harlem" and then sandwich another classic Fifties' group song ("The Wind") between two more Martha and the Vandellas' cuts ("Jimmy Mack," "No Where To Run") and end the whole thing with the above-mentioned title track–well, it's clear that you're not dealing here with the ninth repackaging of the RCA British Blues Archives.

In fact, if it just stopped at concept, timing and programming, it could've been said that Laura Nyro had constructed something akin to the perfect in-between album. But the actual show of force contained on the record skitters awry, and what's left is a collection of great songs that work on a hit-or-miss basis; there are times when her fabled magic takes over and does whole numbers on your sound system, and there are others where she just sounds weak and out-of-depth.

Given the credit list on the album, it can get pretty difficult figuring just how to point up the problem. It can't be laid at the door of producers Gamble-Huff, since it's never really made clear exactly where they went out to lunch during the construction of this record–they don't appear to have had much effect over the finished product. Nor can it be placed on Labelle, who despite a bit more prominence on the record than a back-up chorus should logically get (remember the great distance Motown always placed between Diana Ross and the Supremes to provide a little heft to the underlying rhythm track?), turn in a high-powered support that makes up in enthusiasm what it sometimes lacks in brilliance.

Nor is it Laura herself. Her commitment to the material is evident, the love and respect for it equally so, and her voice–despite a tendency to take the easy way out whenever the originals had room for a little showtime–is evidently alive and well. But what she's working against, what finally confuses the record and tends to dilute it, is the fact that Gonna Take A Miracle never really sits down and decides what it wants to be. They've been given a choice between a simple, pared-to-the-bone type of looking-back album, or a sedately slick, premeditated and highly structured album, that might give these covers a chance at competing on the same level as their primary versions; and they don't ever decide which it's going to be.

As it is, the record fairly cries out for some hard-core direction. So many are accused of the crime of overproducing that it might be forgotten that there's such a thing as underproducing also, and Gonna Take A Miracle sounds best when its foundations are strong, when there isn't all that room to get lost in. On "No Where To Run," which has all the feel if not the actuality of a live take, things don't really get going until the final fade-out chorus, and it's almost a relief when enough instruments and arrangements come in to tighten and propel the selection. "Gonna Take A Miracle" itself, or a spectacular rendition of "You Really Got A Hold On Me," comes off as much better, with Laura more comfortable and singing freer, Labelle tossing off pungent phrases around her, everything set in place and a lot of very good reasons behind them. There are times when the simple approach works better–as on a haunting "Desiree"–but the usual results are mostly too haphazard to depend on.

Gonna Take A Miracle succeeds even through its disappointments, if only by providing a statement of Laura Nyro's perspective at this point in her career. There's a kind of biography involved in the album, an attempt to capture a particular time and place that shouldn't have to depend on how well or badly it was done to carve out its niche in the file, and I think that's maybe how we should judge here. She gives you a lot of Amsterdam Ave. for your money, cut with the 66th St. transverse and Needle Park, another view from a penthouse into the Endicott Hotel. Home; you know how it goes. (RS 100)

LENNY KAYE