Gemini Girl is another handsome reissue package from High Moon Records which goes some way to rehabilitate, indeed revive, the late Laurie Styvers, a Texan who gravitated to London in the swinging sixties and who released two largely forgotten albums on the Chrysalis label in the early seventies. Although well reviewed at the time and awarded the accolade of “single of the week” by the then trendy Radio One with Beat The Reaper, the lead song of her first album, Styvers faded into obscurity, returning to the States and living what appears to have been a fairly satisfying life, untroubled by her failure to leave her mark in the music industry.
Very much in the Carole King/Dory Previn/Judee Sill/Laura Nyro camp of singer songwriters, Styvers was somewhat unique in that she recorded her two albums (Spilt Milk and The Colorado Kid) in England. An earlier brief spell in folk rock band Justine had brought her to the attention of Hush Productions, owned by Shel Talmy and Hugh Murphy and it was these tin pan alley guys who helmed both of the albums. To their credit they gave full rein to Styvers’ beguiling songs and hired some of the cream of UK session men to record the songs but the albums lacked the allure of the stellar names who popped up on any number of LA Canyon releases.
This collection consists of the two albums along with a generous helping of unreleased songs and alternate takes. It opens with Beat the Reaper, the first song on Spilt Milk which does invoke the carefree and innocent ways of her Laurel Canyon contemporaries before Styvers launches into the emotional depths of Imagine That The Lights Have Gone Out, a song slightly drowned by its sweeping strings and horns but packing a powerful punch. Styvers belies her youth (she was only 20 when she recorded this) with a set of songs which are emotionally intelligent, mature and socially aware. The title song, Gemini Girl, is an acute dissection of her own fairly priveledged status while the glorious Five Leaves Left (not related to Nick Drake) finds her juggling hippy days out on Hampstead Heath with the daily routine of getting the shopping in. She returns to this on Eat Your Cornflakes, a sweet pedal steel flavoured song which comes across as her version of the secret diary of a frustrated housewife.
In between recording these albums Styvers returned to America and spent time playing with a bunch of Colorado musicians in a loose limbed combo called Little Brown’s Electric Band. She also heard Carole King’s Tapestry and both were to inform the making of The Colorado Kid. That album opens with You Are My Inspiration, inspired surely by King’s album although there is more than a smidgeon of Laura Nyro to be heard also. Tapestry also looms large on the plaintive piano ballad Take Me In Your Arms Again and the yearning Take Good Care. Nyro comes to mind again on the very impressive There’s Still Time (Follow Your Heart) where Styvers is accompanied on vocals by the perfect trio of Dyan Birch, Frank Collins and Paddy McHugh (a trio who sang with Arrival and soon went on to form Kokomo). It’s topped however by the dramatic delivery of You Be The Tide, I’ll Be The Bay, a song which predates Kate Bush by several years. It’s simply gorgeous.
Beautifully packaged and with an extensive and informative booklet, Gemini Girl casts a spotlight on an artist who deserves to be much better known. Fans of Judee Sill, Laura Nyro and Carol King will surely love this.