Review This Again: Little Earthquakes By Tori Amos!

The Good: Wonderful vocals, Duration of two-disc version, Lyrics
The Bad: Musically inconsistent/disconcerting album arrangement
The Basics: Little Earthquakes is a worthwhile album for survivors and those who want deeper musical experiences, even if it is not the easiest album in terms of track to track transitions.


[There is a big meme in the art community going around now called "Draw This Again." In the meme, artists illustrate how they have grown in their chosen medium by putting side-by-side pictures of art they created in the past and now. My wife had the great idea that I should do something similar with my reviewing. So, for the rest of 2016, I will be posting occasional "Review This Again" reviews, where I revisit subjects I had previously reviewed and review them again, through a lens of increased age, more experience, and - for some - greater familiarity with the subject. This review is one such review, where I am re-experiencing Little Earthquakes after many years and with more experience as both a reviewer and one who has heard much of the Tori Amos library. The album was originally reviewed here!]

I was in high school when Tori Amos broke out with her mainstream hit songs "Silent All These Years" and "Crucify." At the time, I was still listening to music on audio cassettes and because money was tight for me (I spent a lot more on books than on music!), my rule for buying audio tapes was that I needed to know and like three singles from an album before buying it. Little Earthquakes, the Tori Amos album that had "Silent All These Years" and "Crucify" only had the two singles being played on my local pop radio station and so, I consciously avoided buying Tori Amos's solo debut album back in the day. When I became a reviewer, I made Tori Amos my Artist Of The Month one month and I was generally pleased with my decision; Tori Amos has incredible vocal range, but her albums tend to vacillate wildly from the incredibly familiar - one woman with very wispy vocals and a piano - to the virtually unrecognizable; all these years later, I can easily summon in my mind the tune for "Strange Little Girls" and "hear" Amos's guitars on the song.

So, listening to Little Earthquakes after hearing most of Tori Amos's subsequent works . I chose the 2015 two-disc version of Little Earthquakes for my Review It Again because I thought it would be fun to hear all of the b-side material intended for the album. What was instantly striking about listening to Little Earthquakes is how produced the album sounds. For some strange reason - probably because "Silent All These Years" was the first single I heard - I always associate Amos with being very understated musically. But "Crucify" is not vocally-driven; it is sweeping and orchestral in its musical accompaniment and it is followed by "Girl," which has very distinctive, pounding drums.

The two-disc version of Little Earthquakes is almost entirely the musical vision and creation of Tori Amos. The 2015 Deluxe version of Little Earthquakes has thirty tracks spread over two albums. The twenty-four original songs by Tori Amos are accompanied by a cover song (Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit") and five live versions of songs from the original Little Earthquakes. Outside the cover song, Amos is responsible for writing and composing all of the songs and she provides the lead vocals on all of the songs. Amos also provides some of her own backing vocals and plays piano (acoustic and electric) on all of the songs. Tori Amos is also credited as one of the albums co-producers, so it is hard to argue that Little Earthquakes was anything other than the album she wanted to make!

And it is good.

What makes Little Earthquakes so good now is that it is largely made up of a powerful blend of orchestral instruments, Tori Amos's vocals and Amos's piano. The songs are almost entirely a very traditional sounding pop-rock that is piano driven. Musically, Little Earthquakes sounds a lot like a late 1980s, early 1990s Billy Joel album . . . without the obsession of finding a "hook." What separates Amos's work on Little Earthquakes is the way Amos and her piano work together against the production elements, backing vocals and supporting instrumentation. On songs like "Precious Things," the guitar, keyboards and drums create a voluminous musical landscape into which Tori Amos and her piano pull the listener. To envision most of the music of Little Earthquakes in visual terms would be to imagine massive landscapes (created by the backing vocals, guitars, keyboards, bass, drums and other production elements) and Tori Amos at a piano in the setting; but instead of exploring the background, the cameras remain firmly focused on Amos and her piano. In other words, Tori Amos and her piano break out from the somewhat indistinct, but powerful backing elements.

Despite the richness of the bass, percussion and supporting instrumentation, the core of Little Earthquakes is Tori Amos and her piano. Almost all of the songs on Little Earthquakes are one woman and a piano ballads . . . They are generally slower tempo pop ballads, which provide a contemplative sound that invites the listener to pay attention to the lyrics. The supporting instrumentation reaches crescendos on tracks like "Winter" in order to heighten the mood and suck the listener in. Songs like "Happy Phantom" are up tempo, but are somewhat problematic in that the beating on the piano keys - especially in the lower registers - overwhelms the vocals by Tori Amos.

Vocally, Tori Amos has one of the most distinctive voices to ever grace pop-rock music and Little Earthquakes establishes the soprano as a force to be reckoned with. Amos hits high notes, goes lower into the alto register and soars back up for vocals that are emotional and technically incredible. Amos exhibits exceptional lung capacity on Little Earthquakes, as she is able to hit the high notes and hold them. On the up-tempo tracks, Amos manages to sing fast, hit notes solidly and make her words clear. The notable exception is "China," where Amos holds notes, but some of the lines run together into auditory mush.

What keeps Little Earthquakes relevant even now are the lyrics of Tori Amos. Little Earthquakes is an album that glorifies introspection and vulnerability. Opening with "Crucify," Little Earthquakes explores self-punishment, pain, and making changes in one's life. Outside rhymes like "Why am I here / If love Isn't forever / And it's not the weather / Hand me my leather / I could just pretend that you love me / The night would lose all sense of fear / But why do I need you to love me / When you can't hold what I hold dear" ("Leather"), Tori Amos has an incredibly fresh and original lyrical sensibility on Little Earthquakes.

While Tori Amos is wonderfully able to develop concepts and moods in her songs, she illustrates a rare talent on Little Earthquakes, which is to make a potent point in a brief amount of space. On "The Pool," she manages to tell a distinct musical story with very limited lyrics. When Amos sings "One with her hands / Open / 'Don't be afraid' she said / 'No one will know it / Just you and me' / And when it's over / I'll go back" ("The Pool") she tells a very complete musical story.

Much of Little Earthquakes is a triumph of survival and endurance in the face of uncommon, deeply human, horrors. While "Girl" and "Little Earthquakes" get a little repetitive, it is hard to deny that Tori Amos has a powerful sense of poetics to her lines. With the lines "We danced in graveyards / With vampire till dawn / We laughed in the faces of kings never afraid to burn / And I hate and I hate / And I hate and i hate / Disintegration / Watching us wither / Black winged roses that safely changed their color . . . Give me life, give me pain / Give me myself again" ("Little Earthquakes"), Tori Amos details both pain and the desire to overcome her musical protagonist's wounds.

Little Earthquakes has good tracks, but it is harder to recommend as an album than some of Tori Amos's other albums. In some ways, Little Earthquakes sounds like a sampler album for Tori Amos to showcase her range. But track to track, the album ends up sounding somewhat jumbled compared to the more thematically or musically unified albums that would follow. There is something disconcerting about "Tear In Your Hand" and "Me And A Gun" being right next to one another on Little Earthquakes; they are so very different musically.

But the bulk of Little Earthquakes is a musical and lyrical exploration of self discovery and perseverance, which makes it a powerful and worthwhile album for anyone who wants to wallow . . . and overcome.

The best songs are "Winter" (disc 1) and "Mary" (disc 2), the low points are "China" (disc 1) and "Humpty Dumpty" (disc 2).

For other Tori Amos works, please visit my reviews of:
Under The Pink
Boys For Pele
From The Choirgirl Hotel
Jackie's Strength (single)
Spark (single)
To Venus And Back
Strange Little Girls
Tales Of A Librarian: A Tori Amos Collection
Scarlet's Walk
American Doll Posse
Midwinter Graces
Night Of Hunters
Unrepentant Geraldines

7.5/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Tori Amos Returns To Her Roots On Unrepentant Geraldines!

The Good: Predictably amazing vocals, Decent lyrics
The Bad: Musically unimaginative, Comparatively short
The Basics: Unrepentant Geraldines is fine, but entirely unsurprising, Tori Amos.


One of the consequences of having a distinctive style and voice is that it is hard to make something that is both clearly yours and also sounds new. As I sat down to review Unrepentant Geraldines, the latest album by Tori Amos, I accidentally read an article about the album's genesis. It was both unsurprising to me to learn that Tori Amos felt like she was in a creative rut before she produced Unrepentant Geraldines and that after years of doing other musical projects, she decided to return to her musical roots for Unrepentant Geraldines. The reason both ideas were unsurprising to me was that Tori Amos has a very distinctive musical style and voice that she mined very effectively for her early works - but had pretty much done everything one could conceive of within that niche - and after listening to Unrepentant Geraldines on heavy repeat, it is hard not to acknowledge that the album sounds quite a bit like most of Tori Amos's early works.

When Unrepentant Geraldines does not sound like exactly lie what one might expect of Tori Amos if they heard any of her albums from the 1990s, Amos sounds like the is musically channelling Loreena McKennitt on the album. That is not bad, but Unrepentant Geraldines ends up sounding very much like what one expects of Tori Amos or something derivative of another artist (albeit with Amos's amazing voice!).

With fourteen tracks, clocking out at 59:24, Unrepentant Geraldines is entirely the creative work of Tori Amos. As one might expect, Amos wrote both the music and lyrics to all of the songs and she provides the primary vocals on Unrepentant Geraldines. Amos plays her piano and organ on all of the songs and she is credited as the album's sole producer. Unrepentant Geraldines is very much the album Tori Amos intended to create and release.

Musically, Unrepentant Geraldines is largely what one expects of a Tori Amos album. While "Giant's Rolling Pin" has a more poppy sound (and is light guitar-driven) and "Wedding Day" sounds almost Celtic, most of the rest of the songs are very typical "one woman and a piano" songs that are dominated by Tori Amos's voice. The sound of Amos and her piano is not bad, but it is very predictable and few of the tunes truly stand out. Indeed, on tracks like "Weatherman" and "Selkie," the musical accompaniment sounds more like Amos is noodling on the piano while singing, as opposed to developing a full song. Few of the songs have truly memorable instrumental accompaniment to them ("Giant's Rolling Pin" and "16 Shades Of Blue" being notable exceptions).

Vocally, Tori Amos is Tori Amos on Unrepentant Geraldines. Amos sings in her soprano register and has a whispy, waify sound to her songs exactly like one would expect of her. Tori Amos has amazing vocal range and herein lays part of the problem with new Tori Amos music; she did so much, so well, early on in her career, there is virtually nothing she could do with her voice (which dominates her music) to surprise or intrigue the ears of her listeners. Tori Amos maintains her vocal quality on Unrepentant Geraldines, but her melodic voice and amazing lung capacity have not fundamentally changed in any recognizable way from her first albums to Unrepentant Geraldines.

In a similar fashion, Tori Amos has always been an exceptional poets and Unrepentant Geraldines is no exception. Amos writes with beautiful imagery and with decent thematic complexity on Unrepentant Geraldines. Tori Amos lampoons the "states rights" defence to denying human rights to people on "Giant's Rolling Pin" and she deserves a lot of credit for making the subject musical. Still, Amos manages to do just that as she sings "Everybody spies / So why the big surprise? / That is why the working woman / Well deserves a slice / (Mississippi mud or Key lime?) / But now the nice taxman / In every state has tried / To say that it's in his jurisdiction to decide / Who gets a bit of pie / So honestly that's why" ("Giant's Rolling Pin").

As one might expect of a Tori Amos album, Tori Amos sings about empowering women on Unrepentant Geraldines. While there might be plenty to Unrepentant Geraldines that listeners have heard before (thematically and vocally), it is hard not to imagine that Amos would still be able to sway a new generation of young women with anthems that cry out "I'm gonna free myself from your opinion / I'm gonna heal myself from your religion / I'm gonna free myself from your aggression / I'm gonna heal myself from your religion"("Unrepentant Geraldines").

Amos has a keen insight for expressing emotions and making the complex musical. With lines like "As my heart is slowly ripping into pieces / Disconnecting from the circuits of my mind / 'You'll get over it' you say 'in time' / In time? / If the clocks are black absorbing everything but / A remembering how we made it that / Clocks are black" ("16 Shades Of Blue"), it is clear Tori Amos still has something to say and the ability to convey classic sentiments with fresh phrasing.

Ultimately, though, Unrepentant Geraldines is fine, but it is more exactly what one expects, as opposed to sounding new, fresh, or even different from much of the rest of Tori Amos's musical library.

The best track is "16 Shades Of Blue," the low point is the forgettable "Invisible Boy."

For other Tori Amos works, please visit my reviews of:
Little Earthquakes
Under The Pink
Boys For Pele
From The Choirgirl Hotel
Jackie's Strength (single)
Spark (single)
To Venus And Back
Strange Little Girls
Tales Of A Librarian: A Tori Amos Collection
Scarlet's Walk
American Doll Posse
Midwinter Graces
Night Of Hunters

5.5/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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A Collector’s Item More Than A Great Musical Work, The Single “Jackie’s Strength”

The Good: A wonderful song!
The Bad: Hugely expensive in this form!
The Basics: A great song, “Jackie’s Strength” is ridiculously expensive when one manages to track down the one-track radio station single!


My local library, as many of my local readers know, has had a stack of compact discs they’ve been trying to sell for months now. And, whenever I’ve been strapped for a music review, I go to their singles and listen and write about them. So, it might seem pretty weird and wonderful that I came across “Jackie’s Strength” by Tori Amos in their enduring pile. There are multiple versions of this single, but the most valuable is the one-track. The one-track includes just the album cut of “Jackie’s Strength” and the reason it is insanely pricey is because it was the version that was not commercially released. This one-track single was only released to radio stations for airplay, so finding it now is exceptionally difficult (don’t ask: I already bought the library’s copy and sent it to a big fan friend of mine!).

It might seem odd that I would take the track I declared the superlative song on From The Choirgirl Hotel to be a bust as a single, but this has more to do with the rarity and, therefore, expense of getting this one-track version. Unwitting fans might think they are paying big bucks for a rare recording or an exceptional presentation, but the truth is that this is the same version that appears on the album. As a result, despite it being an exceptionally cool song, there is no reason to pay for it in this form, especially to those who already own the album From The Choirgirl Hotel.

With a single track occupying 4:17, “Jackie’s Strength” is very much the creative vision of singer-songwriter Tori Amos. Amos provides the lead vocals on the song that she wrote. As well, she plays her piano, which is the primary instrument on the song. Tori Amos also produced this moody, melodic pop track. This is exactly the song she wanted to release and it probably would have done amazing, had it not been lost at the outset of the Blonde Revolution of the late 1990s amid singles by Britney Spears and Christina Aguillera.

Instrumentally, the song is rich in production that makes it sound like more than just one woman at her piano. The piano dominates with thundering chords that are deeper and resonate, almost making it possible to neglect just how repetitive the song is. Tori Amos’s soprano voice is slow and high in stark contrast to the deeper, more pounding piano. This is very much a pop-rock ballad and it is probably considered “alternative” more because it did not achieve commercial success than it actually being terribly different from the mainstream (it sounds a lot like Fiona Apple’s works from around the same time).

Vocally, Tori Amos does give listeners something somewhat new with her vocals on “Jackie’s Strength.” The single presents Amos with more reverb and production than usual. Her vocals have echoes at key points, but this does not distract from the natural, high pitches she is able to carry, rather it enhances it. Tori Amos has an exceptional voice and while she does get repetitive with some of the lyrics to the refrain on “Jackie’s Strength,” her voice manages to sound fresh and pleasant the entire time.

“Jackie’s Strength” succeeds as well because of the lyrical potency. Tori Amos presents a musical story-song that evolves from being an exploration of teen life – pregnancy, violence, etc. – to a retrospective filled with amazing imagery. Amos makes an uncommon song with her lines like “Stickers licked on lunch boxes / Worshipping David Cassidy / Yeah I mooned him once / On Donna's box / She's still in recovery / Sleep-overs Beene's got some pot / You're only popular with anorexia / So I turn myself inside out / In hope someone will see” (“Jackie’s Strength”) which reference the trials of being a young woman with a realistic sense of angst to it. The whole song has a resonance from the lyrics to the singing to the instrumental accompaniment.

But, it’s not such a great song that anyone but the most die-hard collectors will feel the need or desire to hunt it down in this form. The expense, quite simply, outweighs the quality of the song and because the album this is on may be found so inexpensively, it becomes impossible to recommend buying this when you could get so much more for so much less.

For other Tori Amos works, please visit my reviews of:
Little Earthquakes
Under The Pink
Boys For Pele
From The Choirgirl Hotel
Spark (single)
To Venus And Back
Strange Little Girls
Tales Of A Librarian: A Tori Amos Collection
Scarlet's Walk
American Doll Posse
Midwinter Graces
Night Of Hunters

3.5/10

For other music reviews, please visit my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the music reviews I have written!

© 2012, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Tori Amos's Two-Disc (Sort Of) Best Of (More Or Less): Tales Of A Librarian.

The Good: Some truly wonderful singles and recognizable hits
The Bad: DVD is more or less worthless, One or two real duds.
The Basics: A generally good compilation of the best tracks from the early part of the career of the extraordinary Tori Amos, Tales Of A Librarian is worth the buy!


I have a fantasy that I could write a one line review about a Tori Amos album and it would be enough for all who read it to truly understand how one of her albums is. So, for Tales Of A Librarian: A Tori Amos Collection, I would like to be able to pen the words: "Tori Amos is great when she enunciates her lyrics" and have that be enough. With her first major "best of" compilation, that has both the virtue of being true and being the simplest way to evaluate Tori Amos, possibly one of the most complex female singer-songwriters of the last twenty years.

I am not so big on trying to define genre anymore; they change far too often and what is considered "alternative" when it is initially released too soon becomes the standard for popular music and then passe the next year. As a result, listening to Tales Of A Librarian and its compilation of thirteen years worth of Tori Amos music, Tori Amos comes across as a musically obvious pop-rock artist with phenomenal writing ability and a vocal ability that is split between an exceptional range and terrible mumbling. Yes, Amos is a conflicted artist who has something to say, then moans and mumbles her way through some of her most poetic lyrics, resulting in an inability to be understood.

With 20 tracks, filling up a full 78:40 on the disc, Tori Amos presents Tales Of A Librarian, an anthology of Amos's recognizable singles from the first thirteen years of her career (the Atlantic Record period) as well as some of her best never-hits. So, her two biggest radio singles, "Silent All These Years" and "Cornflake Girl" are presented alongside fan favorites "Spark" and "Winter." As well, Amos released four new songs, two previously unreleased songs and two tracks that had been recorded and released before, but not in the form that they appear on Tales Of A Librarian in.

So, this is a showcase of the works of Tori Amos. Amos wrote all of the songs on album and she produced this album. She is credited with producing or co-producing all but one of the songs on the album and she is the primary vocalist throughout. As well, she plays piano on all of the songs that have one (all but "Me And A Gun") and occasionally provides her own background vocals (as she does on "Mary" and "Precious Things"). So this is, without a doubt, the musical vision of singer-songwriter Tori Amos.

And it is pretty wonderful. Amos has something to say (musically), a great soprano voice to sing it with and an ability on the piano that is one of the most impressive in music today. On Tales Of A Librarian, she includes music from her "beat yourself up" anthem "Crucify" to her haunting rape memoir "Me And A Gun" to an especially witless pop-dance remix of "Professional Widow." She alternates dramatically between the a cappella ("Me And A Gun"), the (more or less) acoustic ("Silent All These Years") and the orchestral ("Mr. Zebra," "Jackie's Strength").

But most people who tune in to Tori Amos are tuning in for her lyrics. Amos has a rather wide repertoire of songs that vary between the autobiographical and the universal, the songs about emotions and story-songs that are often haunting. Amos is a champion of survivors (victims who have overcome) and for that she ought to be universally praised and Tales Of A Librarian offers fans and those who have not traditionally been fans a chance to collect some of her best works in that regard.

Amos is a woman of faith and it is important to note that how religious or not she is, it is clear that she has a strong core of faith to her. Those who are open minded about such things will enjoy songs like "Mary," where she retells Mary Magdalene's story from a different perspective. She rewrites the story as "Everybody wants something from you / Everybody wants a piece of Mary / Lush valley all dressed in green / Just ripe for the picking / God I want to get you out of here / You can ride in a pink Mustang / When I think of what we've done to you / Mary, can you hear me" ("Mary")? Mary is indicative of one of Amos's storysongs and it follows in her theme of creating dark anthems about mistreated women who take a lot, but eventually overcome (sometimes only in the last line and sometimes only by disappearing).

This is not to say it is all misery and suffering on Tales Of A Librarian. No, Amos manages to have some fun and the most obvious example of that is "Mr. Zebra." Despite instrumentals and orchestration on the song that are reminiscent of Queen's "Killer Queen" and Amos's playful syncopation of "Zebra" which turns it into "Zee-brrr-uh" (a three-syllable word) and lyrics deeper than they initially appear, there is something fun about the singsong rhythm and rhyme scheme. Indeed, it is hard not to enjoy it when the piano begins and Amos playfully sings "Hello Mr. Zebra / Can I have your sweater / Cause it's cold cold cold / In my hole hole hole / Ratatouille Strychnine / Sometime she's a friend of mine / With a gigantic whirlpool / That will blow your mind" ("Mr. Zebra"). It is a welcome change from some of the dour angst that encompasses many of her other songs.

That's not to say - as well - that Amos doesn't do angst well or in a way that is interesting and listenable. Indeed, she does. One of the superlative examples of this on the album is "Spark." Amos creates a remarkably conflicted air with her lines "She's convinced she could hold back a glacier . . . But she couldn't keep Baby alive . . . Doubting if there's a woman in there somewhere / Here . . . You say you don't want it again and again / But you don't you don't really mean it / You say you don't want it / This circus we're in / But you don't really mean it. . ." ("Spark"). Conflict is at the core of much of Amos's music and "Spark" illustrates Amos's ability to articulate such themes in a musically interesting way.

Beyond that, Tales Of A Librarian is largely a representative sample of Amos's range, though some of her new songs or new recordings are not as memorable as some of her established works. "Sweet Dreams" is hypnotic and nauseating with the way Amos stretches out the title lines in the musical equivalent of a funhouse mirror (made worse by how it is repeated over and over again) and the dance remix of "Professional Widow" is just insipid for its pounding bass which does not relate at all to the song's themes.

But largely, this album is a compilation of songs that are characterized by one woman and her piano. As her career has progressed, she has added more instruments, but the most effective versions of that growth have been with complimentary instruments. So, for example, on "Jackie's Strength," Amos and her piano are accompanied by a string section and that continues the haunting, melodic sound that defines her light rock ballads.

For those who might not have hear Tori Amos before, she sings with an amazing voice that has tremendous range. She has an eerie soprano, which is probably how "Silent All These Years" shocked so many listeners (outside its lyrical content). But more than just the ability to sing where bats and Mariah Carey are best known to tread, Amos has the ability - which she exercises frequently - to run from a tenor range up through the soprano registers, as she does on "Mr. Zebra" and "Jackie's Strength."

Tales Of A Librarian is actually a two-disc set, with the second disc being a DVD. The DVD has about five live performances of songs that are not missed on the c.d. As well, there are lyrics, just as the liner notes have and frankly the DVD is a bit disappointing. It contains none of her videos from songs on the album and does not add any real insight or appreciation of the artist's artistry. It's a nice enough bonus, but when I saw there was a DVD inside, I expected a lot more, especially for a "best of" compilation.

That said, anyone looking for the digest version of the early works of Tori Amos will find Tales Of A Librarian to be a great investment. It is not, by any means, a perfect album ("Professional Widow" alone sees to that) but it is a great representation of Amos and her abilities. Anyone who likes strong female singer-songwriters and a powerful feminine vocalist will find something to love on this album.

The best track is "Spark," the low point is "Professional Widow."

For other Tori Amos works, please visit my reviews of:
Little Earthquakes
Under The Pink
Boys For Pele
From The Choirgirl Hotel
Spark (single)
To Venus And Back
Strange Little Girls
Scarlet's Walk
American Doll Posse
Midwinter Graces
Night Of Hunters

7.5/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the albums and singles I have written!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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All The Best Tracks Are Available Elsewhere: Under The Pink Is Melodic Mediocrity.

The Good: Moments of voice, Lyrics, Musically interesting for the most part
The Bad: Mumbles through many of her best lines, Moments of vocals/instrumentals
The Basics: On one of her best-selling albums, Under The Pink, Tori Amos fails to impress this reviewer due to a lack of anything truly new or different.


There is a line in an episode of Family Guy where, in reference to Gwen Stefani, Brian says "I don't know what a 'Hollaback Girl' is but I want to kill Gwen Stefani." I don't know what a "Cornflake Girl" is supposed to be, but having listened to the song a lot on Under The Pink, I'm pretty much ready to abandon Tori Amos. I mean, I have an English degree and after reviewing the lyrics to "Cornflake Girl" repeatedly, it doesn't seem to be saying anything. Yes, one of Tori Amos's most recognizable songs seems to be little more than a random string of words arranged next to one another, with a catchy, disturbing and insinuative trauma-implied refrain.

In other words, on Under The Pink, Tori Amos continues her trend of appealing to the post-traumatic stress disorder tween crowd and I've no problem with her being the postergirl for them. I suppose I just want things to make sense and on Under The Pink, Tori Amos does not. She continues to write phenomenal lyrics ("Cornflake Girl" notwithstanding), sings with an angelic voice and mixes the sound up reasonably well from the one-woman and her piano sound. But on the other half, she makes most of her lines virtually incomprehensible for those trying to actually hear her lyrics and, more than on her prior album, this one does have more songs that put Amos plaintively behind her piano with a stark, repetitive sound (as on "Past The Mission" and "Baker Baker").

With a dozen tracks, clocking out at 57:47, Under The Pink is distinctly the work of Tori Amos. On each song, she provides the music and lyrics, as well as the vocals and the primary piano. She notes exclusively playing Bosendorfer, save on one track where she plays an upright piano, but either way, she plays the pianos and she does that with consistent proficiency. In addition to writing all of the lyrics and composing all of the music, Amos is credited as a co-producer on the album. As a result, it is fairly easy to declare that this album is the thoughts and sound Amos intended to release.

Under The Pink is a remarkably average pop-rock album. Despite the lyrics, songs like "Cornflake Girl" and "The Wrong Band" sound remarkably middle-of-the-road piano-based pop-rock. Amos clearly has some jazz and folk sensibilities thrown in, like on "God" and "The Waitress," but for the most part, the sound of the overall album is pop-rock with an alternation between the lone woman at piano sound and strong, produced numbers that capitalize on sound. In fact, in her more instrumentally powerful songs, there seems to be a fairly strong relationship between the volume and anger, as on "Space Dog."

However, the reason most people seem to listen to the works of Tori Amos are her lyrics. On Under The Pink, Amos manages to write a decent combination of songs that are universal and powerful in their emotive depth and obscure storysongs that seem mostly self-referential. The result is an album that is very definitively Tori Amos and while I can see why fans might flock to the album, it is a tough sell for those who are tuning in just to hear what she is about.

This is not to say the experience is entirely unpleasant. Take, for example, her storysong "The Wrong Band." On that song, Amos melodically sings "I think it perfectly clear we're in the wrong band / Senator let's be sincere as much as you can / He called her up and he said the new prosecutor soon will be wanting a word / So she's got a soft spot for hells and spurs / And there's something believin' in her voice again and there's something believin' / Instead of just leavin'" ("The Wrong Band"). The list song is politically aware, clearly speaking to youth who feel disfranchised and want to insure their voices are heard and taken seriously. Amos deserves credit for that and, fortunately, that is one of the clearest songs on the album.

On the other end of the spectrum is "Cloud On My Tongue." Lyrically, this is a confused song exacerbated by lines that are slurred together in a way that illustrates Amos's voice, but mumbled through to be almost incomprehensible. Still, looking up the lines, one puzzles to decipher exactly what it means "Don't stop now what you're doin' / What you're doin' my ugly one / Bring then all here hard to hide a hundred girls in your hair / It won't be fair / If I hate her / If I ate her / You can go now" ("Cloud On My Tongue"). I get that a lot of Amos's songs are cathartic release for her, speaking to young women who have had traumatic events, but sometimes, I have to stop and ask "What are you hearing in these lines?!" Even the song that follows it, "Space Dog" which starts clear and political, degenerates into auditory mush that emotes, but does not speak (or educate).

In fact, the only songs that truly resonated with me were "Past The Mission," which was a clear - if repetitive - number arguably about faith in the real world and "God." "God," on suspects, speaks to a grand silent minority of people who are tired of the apparent inaction of a noninterventionist god. Amos writes and sings a singularly direct and dissonant song when she declares "God sometimes you just don't come through / Do you need a woman to look after you . . . I gotta find what you're doing about things here / A few witches burning gets a little toasty here / I gotta find why you always go / When the wind blows . . ." ("God"). Amos asks the questions that riddle the believer who is plagued with doubts and she makes it work for her song.

That said, "God" is one of the few tracks on the album that both sounds good instrumentally and vocally and has lyrical strength behind it. More often, songs are like "Yes, Anastasia" which sounds good with decent intensity for a lone woman at her piano (in this case backed by a string section) but the lyrics are obscured by vocals that are not enunciated as clearly as they could be.

And, largely, Under The Pink seems less ambitious than "Little Earthquakes," the album that preceded this one. Amos seems to be auditorily more conservative and shows no vocal growth. As a result, she seems more trapped within her niche than an artist who is growing and developing. "God" and "Cornflake Girl" pop up on Amos's compilation album "Tales Of A Librarian" and for those looking for an album to accompany the compilation, Under The Pink hardly makes an argument to be the one worthy of that. Instead, it is too nebulous, repetitive and . . . strangely unambitious for the artist who clearly has something to say.

The best track is "God," the low point is the utterly unmemorable "Bells For Her."

For other Tori Amos works, please visit my reviews of:
Little Earthquakes
Boys For Pele
From The Choirgirl Hotel
Spark (single)
To Venus And Back
Strange Little Girls
Scarlet's Walk
American Doll Posse
Midwinter Graces
Night Of Hunters

5/10

For other music reviews, be sure to visit my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the albums and singles I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Cover Amos: Strange Little Girls Gives Tori Amos A Chance To Reinterpret A Lot!

The Good: Some great, creative versions of other people's works
The Bad: Some poor choices, Some fail to truly reinterpret the works.
The Basics: Tori Amos presents some interesting covers and some that we could have lived without in an album that ultimately is just worth listening to!


As I sit here listening to Tori Amos's cover album Strange Little Girls, I find myself straining to recall if I have ever reviewed an album entirely of cover songs before. In fact, I think the only albums I have reviewed that has been all cover songs were Linda Rondstadt's Feels Like Home and James Darren's This One's From The Heart. I tend to like artists, as opposed to performers, so it is always a tough sell for me to review works where one portrays the other. Singer-songwriters are artists, creators of something new, different and (hopefully) great. Performers simply present what others put in front of them. The latter can have quality, but what they have is hardly their own and often others can come along and remake what they do at least as well as they do.

Enter Tori Amos, inarguably an artist of a caliber that is uncommon in pop-rock music. Amos usually writes all of her own music and lyrics and for Strange Little Girls she wrote none. Instead, this is a project that casts Amos in the role of a performer and it gives her a little latitude to do as she sees fit, within the context of the lyrics and basic music of the original artists. Still, she manages a few reinterpretations that are clever and interesting. But not all of her choices of songs to cover work.

With a dozen songs occupying 62:11, Strange Little Girls is a collection of songs written by artists like Tom Waits, Lou Reed, the Beatles and . . . ugh, Eminem. Amos provides the primary vocals on all of the songs, but she does not even play an instrument on every track. Sure, she plays piano, wurlitzer and Bosendorfer on various tracks, but she also provides vocals only on some of the songs. In fact, some of the arrangements for songs which reinterpret the originals were not even done by Amos! She did, however, produce the album, so it is hard to say that she did not get the album she intended to with Strange Little Girls.

Even so, the album is hardly an impressive one. There are individual tracks that stand out - both good and bad - but the overwhelming difference between this album and virtually every other Tori Amos project is just how produced the album is. None of the songs are Amos's trademark one-woman at a piano sound. None of the songs are particularly stark or as haunting as she usually manages to get with her own works. And the songs are truly a mixed bag when it comes to their lyrics, which tend to be one of the stronger things that Amos has going for her on her albums.

Some of her picks, though, are as close to genius as one could get. Tom Waits and Tori Amos sound completely different vocally, but musically and lyrically, they are two very similar artists. As a result, it is perfectly natural, appropriate and likable that Amos chose to cover the Tom Waits song "Time." Indeed, she sings his lines "And they all pretend they're Orphans / And their memory's like a train / You can see it getting smaller as it pulls away / And the things you can't remember / Tell the things you can't forget that / History puts a saint in every dream / Well she said she'd stick around / Until the bandages came off" ("Time") that is perfect and mournful both evoking Waits's darkness and infusing it with an undeniable quality of Amos's own. If there were any track on the album that sounds like it could be written by Tori Amos, it would have to be "Time."

Perhaps the most disturbing track as antithesis to that is the Eminem song "Bonnie & Clyde '97." This terrible song is not improved upon by Tori Amos whispering it out as a psychotic little storysong. It's dark, which fits Tori Amos, but it is mean and brutal and predictable in a way that Amos's own lyrics usually are not. So when she sings "Wake up sweepy (sic) head we're here, before we pway (sic) / we're gonna take mama for a wittle (sic) walk along the pier / Baby, don't cry honey, don't get the wrong idea / Mama's too sweepy (sic) to hear you screamin in her ear (ma-maa!) / That's why you can't get her to wake, but don't worry / Da-da made a nice bed for mommy at the bottom of the lake / Here, you wanna help da-da tie a rope around this rock. . ." ("Bonnie & Clyde '97") in a speaking voice, it is less impressive than virtually any other song she could have picked. In fact, I would have taken a Tori Amos cover of Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" before putting this poorly-written schlock on the album!

The decent aspect of Strange Little Girls is that largely Amos chose songs that were at least up to her level of diction. Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King's "Raining Blood" uses more sophisticated language than the usual thousand words that pop up in the average pop-rock song, so it comes out sounding good from Tori Amos. Amos sounds very natural when she sings the lines "Death will be their acquisition / The sky is turning red / Return to power draws near / Fall into me, the sky's crimson tears / Abolish the rules made of stone / Pierced from below, souls of my treacherous past" ("Raining Blood"), which helps to make the song more her own.

Largely, Amos does use Strange Little Girls to reinterpret the songs she is covering . . . within limits. Amos uses media clips on "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" to make a satirical statement against gun rights by including clips of newscasters talking about John Lennon's murder and George W. Bush witlessly declaring that criminals shouldn't have guns. It works and is interesting.

But some of her best covers hardly do anything impressive as far as reinterpretation goes. For example, the slow and moody "Enjoy The Silence" and "I'm Not In Love" are hardly great remakes of the originals. Do they sound different? Sure; both were originally 1980's new wave hits that had a lot of production and beats designed for dancing. Amos removes the dance beats and replaces them with solemn pianos. The thing is, this is hardly groundbreaking or impressive as LYRICALLY this is what both songs were already doing. Amos makes them sound good, though and it is interesting enough to hear them closer to the lyrical intensity of what the songs ought to be.

That said, perhaps the most impressive reinterpretation would have to be "Heart Of Gold." On that track, Amos takes Neil Young's somewhat upbeat sounding song and makes it into a nightmarish, twisted track that makes one feel like their ears will bleed. Ultimately, it is that type of creative energy that made me decide to recommend Strange Little Girls. Amos is clever and interesting and on this album she articulates well enough to actually be understood. Sometimes, that's the best we can hope for!

The best track is "Time," the low point is "Bonnie & Clyde '97."

For other Tori Amos works, please visit my reviews of:
Little Earthquakes
Boys For Pele
From The Choirgirl Hotel
Spark (single)
To Venus And Back
Scarlet's Walk
American Doll Posse
Midwinter Graces
Night Of Hunters

6/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the music I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Undeterred By Hundreds Of Reviews, I Find The Tori Amos Album Little Earthquakes Average.

The Good: Great voice, Generally decent lyrics, Interesting overall sound
The Bad: Seriously frontloaded
The Basics: In a close call, even the lyrics of Tori Amos can't save her from the erratic music presentation that leads me not to recommend Little Earthquakes.


There is something odd about going back to the things that we have memories about from our youth, but did not necessarily have. I have been listening to a lot of albums by Tori Amos lately and as I've listened to her popular breakthrough album Little Earthquakes, I've thought a lot about where I was when the album was first released. I recognize the two big radio hits, "Silent All These Years" and "Crucify," of course, but I didn't own this album back in the day and I started to think about why. When Little Earthquakes was released, I was just entering high school and I didn't have a disposable income and I am pretty sure I was still listening to music on audio cassette. I don't know why Tori Amos didn't grab me from those singles enough to pick the album up, but it seems odd to me because the more I listen to Little Earthquakes, the more I think I would have liked it more when I was in high school and that phase of my life.

As it is, now, listening to Little Earthquakes, I am caught in an odd bind. I find myself appreciating some newer Tori Amos works more and I can recognize how this album was quite different from anything else that was on the radio at the time. But the flipside is that I've listened to the album at least twelve times now and, frankly, I'm bored by it. Whereas I listened to Scarlet's Walk at least as many times back-to-back and still was enjoying it and finding new things in it when I finally moved on, Little Earthquakes just doesn't carry the spark to make me want to delve deeper into it and auditorily, it's just not interesting.

No one is more surprised by my indifference to Little Earthquakes than I am; I figured it would be an album I was exceptionally excited about and would keep me engaged. Sadly, it didn't.

With twelve songs occupying 57:07, Little Earthquakes at least has the distinction of being very much the musical vision of singer songwriter Tori Amos. Amos wrote all of the songs and she provides the primary vocals on all of them. As well, she plays acoustic piano on eleven of the tracks and electric piano on one of them (alongside her acoustic piano performance). She is given a production credit (or co-credit) on four of the songs. With only a third of the album coming under her production direction, it is difficult to say how much of the ultimate sound of the album is her intended one, but generally this does appear to be the creative endeavor of Tori Amos.

Unfortunately, the result is strangely a mixed bag and production is a good place to start. Little Earthquakes contains a number of songs that might surprise those who know Amos from the demure musings of "Silent All These Years." While there are other songs on the album that sound like that (like "Winter"), there are a number of tracks that are much heavier. "Precious Things," for example, stands out as a thrashing, angry tune with Amos banging on acoustic and electric guitars. Her pianos are almost overwhelmed by the electric guitars, percussion and male backing vocals.

As well, one need only listen to "Crucify," which kicks off the album, to recognize that the overall sound of Amos's work is carefully produced, including vocal alteration elements. So, while Amos has a great natural voice, several of the tracks do not capitalize on that. While some artists can effectively jump across many musical styles on one album and make the album work - most notably Sophie B. Hawkins's album Timbre (reviewed here!) and Heather Nova's album South (reviewed here!) - Little Earthquakes sounds much more fractured that that. There is a buckshot approach to the album with songs that alternate between upbeat, jazzy ditties like "Happy Phantoms" to a Madonna-esque overproduced pop ballad with "China" to the piano-driven, stark musings of "Winter."

The result is an album that is good, not great, and ultimately fails to land. The thing is, after twelve listens (I'm on number thirteen as I write this) I find myself with an utter inability to speak about anything on the latter half of the album. After "China," the album devolves into an auditory sludge where the songs blend one into another in an indistinct sound that is completely unmemorable. While the first half of the album might be chaotic, fractured and dissonant, the latter half is bland. It was in writing that line that I realized that I wasn't going to recommend the album.

So, why did it take me so long to recognize that I was not as enthused about Little Earthquakes as I anticipated? The lyrics are a great place to start. Tori Amos has beautiful poetic lyrics that make it easy to see how she reached an audience. The sense of loss, oppression and self-punishment that is articulated in "Crucify" and "Silent All These Years" easily speak to young people. Survivors need - and deserve - a postergirl to sing the anthems of their struggles and Tori Amos makes for an amazing and articulate choice in that regard.

The thing is, Amos has poetics that are difficult to handle sometimes. So, for example, on "Leather," she horrifically muses on abuse with lines that are wrenching to read or hear, like ". . . Don't you want more than my sex / I can scream as loud as your last one / But I can't claim innocence / Oh god, could it be the weather / Oh god why am I here if love isn't forever / And it's not the weather . . . I could just pretend that you love me / The night would lose all sense of fear . . ." Amos is fearless with her lyrics and she deserves a huge amount of credit for that. "Leather" does not try to be light or fun, but it is not melodramatic either.

Fortunately, the entire album is not made up of psychological horror stories set to music. Indeed, Amos probably speaks so powerfully to her audience because mixed in with the abuse and terror and proto-cutting anthems, there are songs expressing an intense desire to be loved and to experience what love is. So, for example, on "China," Amos soars with a great sense of longing and the result is passionate and intense. This primarily comes when she sings "Sometimes I think you want me to touch you / How can I when you build the great wall / Around you in your eyes / I saw the future together / You just look away in the distance" ("China"). Amos's sense of desire speaks quite truly to the basic human need to connect and that is amplified by the sense of betrayal on so many of the other songs.

I suspect, though, that the lyrics to the songs on Little Earthquakes are also why Tori Amos never captured a larger share of the market. She's too smart for the masses. The poetics Amos employs to engage her listeners are articulate and intelligent, utilizing a well-defined sense of poetry and a level of diction the average pop-rock listener is not entirely familiar with and therefore tends to be wary of. So when Amos presents a storysong like "Winter" with lines like "I think of winter / I put my hand in my father's glove / I run off where the drifts get deeper / Sleeping beauty trips me with a frown / I hear a voice / 'You must learn to stand up for yourself cause I can't always be around' / He says when you gonna make up your mind / When you gonna love you as much as I do" it's probably too complicated for most listeners who seem to like things spoon-fed to them.

On Little Earthquakes, Amos still is finding her voice. She had an incredible soprano voice and songs like "Me And A Gun" are carried entirely on the strength of her vocal ability. Similarly, "Silent All These Years" would hardly be as haunting were it not for the starkness of Amos's vocal presentation. That said, the album is not a great showcase for the purity of Amos's voice and there are moments it seems like she is trying desperately to appeal to a wider audience with her presentation. Most notable among these is "Tear In Your Hand" where Amos sounds like she is emulating Stevie Nicks. I love Stevie Nicks as much as the next person, but Amos has her own distinct voice and doesn't need to try to be any other artist, even on an album as early as this one.

Ultimately, this is a good album, but not great. It has the potential that Amos realized later on in her career, but she just doesn't land it for me, especially on the replayability. One suspects the best tracks from Little Earthquakes have (or will) end up on a compilation album (in fact, they have: "Tales Of A Librarian") and that one might be better of purchasing that compilation than this album.

The best track is "Winter," the low point is the unmemorable "Mother."

For other Tori Amos works, please visit my reviews of:
Boys For Pele
From The Choirgirl Hotel
Spark (single)
To Venus And Back
Scarlet's Walk
American Doll Posse
Midwinter Graces
Night Of Hunters

5/10

For other music reviews, please be sure to visit my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the albums and singles I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The New Thing We've Heard Before: American Doll Posse Satisfies Because It's Middle-Of-The-Road.

The Good: Decent lyrics, Good instrumentals, Good enough vocals.
The Bad: Nothing terrible different from Tori Amos.
The Basics: Good sounding, but not terribly new, American Doll Posse is exactly what one expects from a Tori Amos album, save that it's a bit more commercial pop-rock instrumentally.


There is a fairly well-known concept in the business of being cutting edge, which is the idea that to be a commercial success one needs to produce something that is new and familiar. The argument goes that the true trendsetters retain some measure of familiarity while producing something that challenges the audience in one way. In other words, it is considered commercial suicide to change all elements of a formula and produce something that is entirely new and different from anything anyone has experienced before. That level of audacity, the argument goes, is too much for the general populace and they tend to rebel rather than adopt the new work or concept.

I mention this at the outset of my review for the Tori Amos album American Doll Posse because it seems with this outing that Tori Amos has somewhat adopted this philosophy. Unlike something that is crazy and unlistenable like an album by Bjork, American Doll Posse retains Amos's lyrical creativity, presents her moody vocals and presents a more straightforward pop-rock instrumental sound than many of her other albums (at least the ones I've heard). And it was on my eighth listen through when I was listening to "Bouncing Off Clouds" that I realized I was enjoying the song and the album and the reason was that more of the songs are a nonthreatening pop-rock like that song than, for example, the more moody and less comprehensible "Father's Son," which pops up late in the album. Yeah, I found I enjoyed the album because it challenged me less than some of Amos's other works. Go figure.

With twenty-three tracks, clocking out at an impressive 78:42, American Doll Posse manages to keep me impressed with Tori Amos as a singer-songwriter. Tori Amos wrote all of the songs on the album and she produced the album as well. Right off the bat, that is a tremendous amount of creative control for an artist to retain and that Amos uses that energy and ability to fill an album up as much as she does with American Doll Posse is noteworthy. After months of reviewing albums by talented singer-songwriters who barely use half a c.d.'s capacity (James Taylor, I'm looking in your direction!) is it refreshing to listen to something so full as American Doll Posse.

As usual, Amos provides the primary and backing vocals, though she credits other personalities with some of the vocals. I swear sometimes I suspect that Amos is simply making albums still to do the photoshoots for the liner notes where she gets to play dress-up. If she weren't so gifted (I seem to be more impressed with her later works than her earlier endeavors that gave her her vast following) she'd be truly annoying. In addition to singing, she plays the Bosendorfer, Rhodes, Wurlitzer, Electric piano, Clavichord, meletron and piano upright. Her other personalities may be vocally inclined, but apparently only Tori is instrumentally adept. And on American Doll Posse she proves her worth yet again.

American Doll Posse does appear to be a concept album splitting up at least four personalities and giving them voice. This makes some sense as the album is broken into four groups of songs, generally following along the lines of the experimental, location story-songs, the overtly sexual and musings on mental health. The blocks of songs take the listener on a musical journey from the more upbeat jazzy and pop-rock sounds of songs like "Big Wheel" and "Bouncing Off Clouds" to the more ethereal ballads like "Roosterspur Bridge." The trip is a decent one.

The fundamental quality that all of the songs share is a musing tone to the lyrics. This is a far less declarative album overall, with a wider range of interpretation to many of the lines. For example, "Body And Soul" is a song that can be taken for its more overt religious content with its lines like "Sweet communion / I have waited all my life / You say you are bonafide / To be my judge / Lay your law down on me love" or for the strong sexual connotation that comes through even when she sings "In my temple boy be warned / Violence doesn't have a home now but ecstasy / That's as pure as a woman's gold." Amos effectively combines religious sentiments with sensual emotional and sexual content to create songs that are stirring. Of course, for Tori Amos, this is par for the course, hence the familiar thing we've heard before.

As well, listeners can expect the self-revelatory songs they might expect from Tori Amos. Amos has a voice and musical presence to her story-songs, especially the ones that seem to be autobiographical that make her listeners believe she is connecting with them in a very personal way. So when she sings "Then I tried once to comply / With an authority that would / Subsidize my wild side / But at this altar was sacrificed / Yes you can laugh a femme fatale / In a bride's dress now married to / The effortlessness of the cracks / That lie between the facts" ("Almost Rosey") many read this as permission to move past the pain and into healthy relationships again. For those so bound to a celebrity's ideology, this becomes a gift from the artist to her fans and she gives it through revealing her own surrender of hatred and pain from her own experiences. In this way, American Doll Posse becomes both a decent listening experience for casual listeners and an invitation to catharsis for the most literal fans.

But even her more pop-driven songs on this album are lyrically interesting. I found myself pleasantly grooving out to the early songs on the album, though I did find her making a refrain out of being a MILF somewhat troubling. But on "Bouncing Off Clouds," Tori Amos reinvents the fun-sounding, but sensible pop-rock love song with her lines "Bouncing off clouds we were / Is there a love Lost and Found / Make it easy / Make this easy / It's not as heavy as it seems." She makes it fun sounding and playful, even through the breakup portions of the song capturing well the energy and enthusiasm with which we throw ourselves into love and relationships.

Vocally, American Doll Posse is a very average Tori Amos recording. "Dark Side Of The Sun" contains Amos's trademark soaring notes as she runs through an impressive range from soprano to husky in moodiness. "Posse Bonus" has her articulating quickly and the rest of the songs contain some range of her usual soprano slurring and enthusiastic enunciations.

Instrumentally, this is a rather piano and keyboard driven album and the only real problem with that is that there are songs that sound either like one another or like very typical piano-driven songs. "Big Wheel," for example, has a bandstand type feel to the pounding piano beats. Yes, the piano is used more to keep time than say anything musical in that song and it sets the listener up for an experience that is more familiar than groundbreaking.

Overall, the album is good and it is a very easy recommend for American Doll Posse, but one ought not to expect this to be the great defining work from Tori Amos for all those who want her to continue trendsetting. On this album she tends to fit instrumentally within a long tradition of pop-rock artists and vocally within the parameters of where she has been almost her entire career. Fortunately, her lyrics continue to set her apart from most every other artist, giving her a place to push the envelope. And besides, any musical artist who can convincingly use "vitriolic" in one of their songs deserves to be heard!

The best track is "Bouncing Off Clouds," the weakest track is the unmemorable "Programmable Soda."

For other Tori Amos works, please visit my reviews of:
Boys For Pele
From The Choirgirl Hotel
Spark (single)
To Venus And Back
Scarlet's Walk
Midwinter Graces
Night Of Hunters

7/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the albums and singles I have reviewed.

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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I Might Not Understand Half The Lyrics, But Scarlet’s Walk Is Still A Perfect Album!

The Good: Great vocals, Decent lyrics, Musically and instrumentally interesting, Duration.
The Bad: None of significance (Minor slurring on some of the lyrics)
The Basics: Tori Amos manages to pull off what my preferred artist - Sophie B. Hawkins - has not yet managed with a perfect album with Scarlet’s Walk!


Today I find myself considering the body of my music reviews and finding myself somewhat troubled. There are very few perfect albums in my estimation and I try to reserve my five-star reviews for the perfect albums. I'm feeling strange, though, because after a dozen listens to Scarlet’s Walk, I am happy to proclaim it a perfect album. The weirdness comes in my not having enjoyed most of Tori Amos's albums before now and my mind wandering to Timbre (reviewed here!) by Sophie B. Hawkins. Hawkins is one of my favorite musical artists and Timbre was the closest she came to a perfect album (I still can't forgive the album for "Mmm My Best Friend!").

So, it is admittedly odd for me to be so eager to recommend Scarlet’s Walk, even though it is superior to Timbre if for no other reason than it does not have any flawed tracks. Scarlet’s Walk is one of those weird "perfection by default" albums. The music on it is well-written, (generally) well performed, contains interesting instrumentals, and comes together cohesively as an album. But more than that, it doesn't have any tracks that suck the energy out of the album. Each song is better than the prior one, building throughout the album to a magnificent whole. So, as I try to find something to complain about, I'm coming up empty. Congratulations Tori!

With 18 tracks, clocking in at 73:58, Scarlet’s Walk is easily the best use of the medium I have yet heard from Tori Amos. Filling the c.d. with one wonderful, melodic track after another, Amos manages to tell musical stories, emote deep emotions and present an album that does not have a boring, homogenous sound. Tori Amos, as is her fashion, wrote every song on the album and she also sings all of the vocals, providing primary and backing vocals on the tracks. This is actually impressive on songs like "Strange" where the backing vocals are actually integral to helping establish the haunted mood of the song.

As well, Amos plays various pianos: Bosendorfer piano, Rhodes, Wurlitzer (technically an organ, I believe) and Arp. Rumor is on several of the tracks, she is playing more than one of those at a time, at least she is able to do that in concerts. Impressive. As well, Scarlet’s Walk is produced by Tori Amos, so this is very much her musical vision.

And wow, what a musical vision! Structured in the liner notes like a concept album of a cross-country trip, Scarlet’s Walk meanders perfectly between songs about places ("Don't Make Me Come To Vegas," "I Can't See New York") and emotions ("Crazy," "Taxi Ride"). As well, she manages to mix in songs that tell little storysongs that are clever ("Mrs. Jesus") or just plain creepy and fun ("Wednesday"). In other words, this is a thematically diverse album and - to make the comparison - it doesn't have any of the lemons of Timbre.

That said, one of the ways Scarlet’s Walk immediately grabbed my attention was in the lyrics. First and foremost, Amos seems to be a master poet. Indeed, one need not even have music to accompany lines like "Where the river cross crosses the lake / Where the words / Jump off my pen and into your pages / Do you think just like that / You can divide / This / You as yours / Me as mine to before we were Us" ("Your Cloud"). Tori Amos returns the art to the breakup song and on Scarlet’s Walk, songs like "Your Cloud" remind those of us naysayers why she has such a following.

But one of the things that struck me right away about Scarlet’s Walk - outside being able to understand most all of the lyrics as Amos was singing them for a change - was some of the quirky humor Amos infused into some of the songs. Amos sings about paranoia and fear, but she makes it playful on "Wednesday" when she sings "Nothing here to fear / I'm just sitting around being foolish when there is work to be done / Just a hang-up call the quiet breathing of our / Persan we call Cajun on a Wednesday / So we go from year to year with secrets we've been keeping / Though you say you're not a Templar man / Seems as if we're circling for for very different reasons." Amos has a way of making strong allusions (like to the Knights Templar) and still creating a song that has a playful quality even while being deep. That's quite a talent.

Even so, Amos often goes for deep and straightforward moody even on Scarlet’s Walk. She tells a storysong involving the relationship between jealousy and vengeance on "Don't Make Me Come To Vegas" and it's both clever, quick and dark. And on "I Can't See New York," she creates a dark metaphor for life and death with her lines "From here crystal meth in meters of millions in the end all we have, soul blueprint. / Did we get lost in it / Do we conduct a search for this 'from the other side' / From the other side? / What do they mean / Side of what?" Being lost in a metropolis is blended with being lost in a drug haze which is mixed in with being lost between life and death. It's a clever song with layers of meaning in the lyrics and it is a pretty exceptional song from the writing.

Which leads me to the vocals. Usually, I have a strong problem with the vocals of Tori Amos. She is a great writer and she has an amazing soprano voice, but she often mumbles and slurs her lines in a way that makes one wonder why someone so brilliant wouldn't want to be understood. On Scarlet’s Walk, she seems to abandon the pretense in favor of both vocal range and holding notes. But on this album, she prioritizes articulation, which saves her from the usual vocal morass she presents.

One of the best examples is the song "Mrs. Jesus." On this song, she presents vocals that dominate her otherwise obvious pianowork (which is supported nicely by a string section). On "Mrs. Jesus," she enunciates her lines, holds notes long and plays in the lower range of her vocal abilities. The result is a song that is clear and different from most anything on most of her other albums.

Vocally, Amos still presents a number of songs that have the dreamy quality of her layered primary and backing vocals. "Taxi Ride" has a hypnotic quality to it that makes one all right with the fact that the lyrics are almost incomprehensible in her presentation. The song becomes more about the journey than her meaning and while I'm not fond of albums that make that priority on every track, it works on this track on this album.

Instrumentally, Scarlet’s Walk is one of the more diverse Tori Amos experiences on the market. "Wednesday" has an almost jazzy quality and many of the songs are actually upbeat in their musical presentation. This is one of Amos's more produced works which gives it a very haunting and powerful presentation. In other words, this is not just bland pop-rock on the musical side. Amos tends to start with piano (most overtly on "Another Girl's Paradise") and enriches with bass, percussion and sometimes a full orchestral backing.

There is something for virtually everyone on Scarlet’s Walk and anyone who wants something great by one of the best singer-songwriters of our time (and keep in mind, I'm not usually lauding her performance!) this is the Tori Amos album to pick up!

The best tracks are "Wednesday" and "Crazy" and there's no weak track on the album!

For other Tori Amos works, please visit my reviews of:
Boys For Pele
From The Choirgirl Hotel
Spark (single)
To Venus And Back
Midwinter Graces
Night Of Hunters

10/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing by clicking here!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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