Eli and the Thirteenth Confession by Laura Nyro

Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, Laura Nyro's second album, arrived on Columbia in 1968 after a false start: Verve had been planning to put it out as Soul Picnic before she changed labels. She'd already tried out some of these songs at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and "Luckie" grew out of a piece she'd played at her 1966 Verve audition. Nyro wrote every song, and she arranged and produced the record with Charlie Calello.

The songs swell, stop and change direction on a whim, carried by a three-octave mezzo-soprano that can whisper and wail in the same breath. The 5th Dimension made a hit of "Stoned Soul Picnic", but her own take is looser and stranger. Bob Cato shot the cover, the back shows Nyro kissing a younger version of herself, a goodbye to her childhood, and she insisted the lyric sheet be printed in perfumed ink. It became one of the year's underground successes.

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