Mystique is Laura Nyro's mantra. During the Sixties her delicate urban lyricism made her a Cher for middle-class bohemians—a bohemian princess—and a four year sabbatical fashioned that mystique into drama…. The release of Smile aroused curiosity as to what Laura Nyro would have to report after several years in the shadows: as with Joni Mitchell, Nyro sparks in her audience a sense that they are not only watching her grow as artist and woman, but that they are shaping that growth—that a collective autobiography is being written.

Smile makes for a very dull chapter.

Smile suggests that those years were spent in a hammock, or on the front porch watching the waning moon, or on a tranquil beach … evenings without lightning. Like so many female-artiste works (Snow's Second Childhood, Janis Ian's Aftertones, Carole King's Thoroughbred), the album is fluid, wistful, jazzy … caressingly inoffensive … inoffensive except...