Nina Simone Picks Up Where She Left Off
A comeback album that feels less like a return and more like a reckoning.
Nina Simone made Nina's Back (1985) after years away from recording, and honestly, it shows — but not in the way you might fear. This is a lean, direct record, mostly just Simone at the piano with spare accompaniment, and if you're expecting the full orchestral sweep of her Philips years or the raw political energy of her RCA records, you won't find that here. What you will find is a singer who sounds like she has stopped trying to impress anyone. The voice is lower, rougher around the edges, and she leans into that rather than working around it.
The track selection is interesting — she covers some familiar ground but approaches it differently than she did in her prime commercial years. There's a directness to the performances that feels earned rather than effortless. Simone was a composer, arranger, pianist and singer of real range, and even on a smaller production like this one, her piano playing keeps everything grounded. She never lets a song drift into pure nostalgia. The arrangements stay spare enough that you're always aware of what she's doing harmonically, which is worth paying attention to.
Nina's Back is not her best album — anyone telling you otherwise is being sentimental. But it's a genuinely interesting document of an artist in her fifties who had lived through a lot and wasn't pretending otherwise. If you already love Simone and want to hear what she sounded like after the wilderness years, this is worth your time. If you're new to her, start with her early Bethlehem recordings or the Colpix material first, then come back to this one. It'll mean more that way.
