As the 1980s rolled around, Nina Simone was not in a good place professionally or personally. Her last album of the ‘70s, Baltimore, had not received the recognition she felt it deserved, she had weathered several upheavals in her family life as an encroaching mental illness nipped at her and she’d even left the United States for Paris. There, in 1982, she recorded Fodder on My Wings for a small French label, standing off to the side as it was alternately ignored or dismissed by most fans and critics. It is, to be sure, an inconsistent affair: Simone’s voice, which had always gotten by more on emotion than technique, had taken on a scorched, dusky tone, which, at her best, she used to her advantage and, in other spots, simply got in the way of her effort to deliver. It’s a curious collection, ranging from French songs to stories inspired by Simone’s time in Trinidad and Liberia to a few that recall the fury and fire of her best work. Oddly, perhaps, one of those falling into the latter category is Simone’s personalization of “Alone Again Naturally,” the singer’s take on the sappy Gilbert O’Sullivan hit. In her hands, it becomes a highly personal moment of both beauty and rage, as she recalls, in stark terms, the impending death of her father: “I realized that I despised this man I once called father,” she sings without a trace of sadness. “I Sing Just to Know That I’m Alive,” on the other hand, is a Caribbean-informed celebration of the joy of making music, a performance that proves she still had so much to say, even if few were listening at the time.