75. Nina Simone - Wild is the Wind (1966)

1. I Love Your Lovin' Ways
2. Four Women
3. What More Can I Say
4. Lilac Wine
5. That's All I Ask
6. Break Down And Let It All Out
7. Why Keep On Breaking My Heart
8. Wild Is The Wind
9. Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Hair
10. If I Should Lose You
11. Either Way I Lose

My very first thought upon starting this album was 'Since when did Nina Simone become a man?' Which is always a nice first impression to have.

Nina Simon is gifted with one of the more unique voices in R&B music. It has a tremendous range of expression, able to evoke any number of emotions. The album too displays a very wide range, but unfortunately it doesn't quite manage to hold itself up as successfully. Like a lot of R&B albums from this period, this thing was haphazardly flung together from a variety of sessions taking place over a few years, with the result that this record flip flops faster than John Kerry under pressure.


While in other cases this would be seen as showing the artist's true diversity, here it comes across as some douchebags not knowing how to structure an album properly. The songs are a jarring split between more 'pop' sounding soul records like 'I Love Your Lovin' Ways' that sound like they're meant for radio play, and introspective darker songs like 'Four Women' and the title track. You can imagine that they don't mix together very well. 


The conventional tracks are listenable, but mostly rather slight. The only ones that stick out are the first one (go figure) and the rather interesting 'Break Down and Let It All Out', which if you sent it forward in time 10 years and gave it to a disco diva, would've been a massive hit. It's uncanny.


The more ambitious tracks almost save the record from mediocrity, and they're by far the most memorable. 'Four Women' tells the story of four black women and their tragic position in life. Here Simone's civil rights advocating background really shines through, especially in the oh-so dramatic ending ("MY NAME....IS PEACHEEEEEEEEEEEEES!").


'Wild Is The Wind' has been overshadowed a bit by the David Bowie cover, but her version is haunting and near theatrical in its phrasing. It's 7 minutes long, which is quite a feat, since most soul artists didn't dare go past the 3 minute mark back then. Props to Nina for straight not giving a shit.


This album's got some really good songs on it, but the filler clashes with it so bad that the listening experience is not as satisfying as it should be. It's sort of fitting that the last album I review for 1966 is thrown together like this, like so many albums were in this period. 6/10