The New Single From Tori Amos: VIDEO
Tori Amos, who struck the 90's music scene as the original "Piano Girl," (take that, Fiona) is back in action with her newest single, "Welcome To England."
The new album, "Abnormally Attracted To Sin" "drops," to use music business parlance, on May 18th. The record will be the latest in a prolific career: Amos has released a record every two years or less since her seminal record "Little Earthquakes" in 1992.
The problem? Amos hasn't put out a great record since 1996's bizarre, guttural "Boys For Pele."
...That sound you hear in the background is Amos' famously loyal fans coming for a reckoning... I stay firm in my analysis.
It's true that 1998's "From The Choirgirl Hotel" had some lovely, haunting tunes on there -- "Spark" and "She's Your Cocaine" come to mind first -- but it's "Pele" that stands out as the last Amos record that was interesting, nuanced, and well-produced from start to finish.
From "Choirgirl" on, Amos' work has crept slowly towards a frustrating mixture of embarrassing lack of nuance and blurry banality. Rather than focusing on making interesting music, her albums have becoming "interesting concepts"; her past four records, "Strange Little Girls," "Scarlet's Walk," "The Bee Keeper," and "American Doll Posse" have all been concept albums which somehow have all failed to groups songs -- maddeningly both disparate and so dull so as to all sound the same -- around her theme.
Hand in hand with the preoccupation with concept rather execution, is a growing propensity for self-caricature. 1994's "Under the Pink" managed to include comparisons between teenage female sexuality and Christian morality in ("And when my hand touches myself / I can finally rest my head /and when they say take from his body/I think I'll take from mine instead") without seeming pat -- or, at least too pat. If her lyrics ran on the "obvious" side (when she wasn't singing about "ice cream assassins" of course) they were tempered by her piano work -- never predictable, always challenging.
Yet nuance seemed all but thrown out the window with the cover art of her last record, "American Doll Posse": Amos standing in front of a depressing suburban home, the Bible in one hand, the other reaching towards nothing, blood dripping down the inside of one leg. Fascinating intellectual conversation has given to predictably hysterical cartoonishness.
Of course, each of Amos' records have their high points smattered throughout, but Amos has enough genius and creativity to make whole, sustained albums with originality as well as cogency, not to mention quality evident from beginning to end-- the mark of a master musician. I'm not pushing for "old Tori" -- I would never. Amos can't writing a song like "Silent All These Years" (her first big single) because... she's been singing for the past decade -- she's not silent, on any number of levels. But I do wish that Amos' work would resume the characteristic that marked her first four major releases: depth.
Not artful postures of depth (something about dressing up as different Greek archetypes of "womanality" and then pretending to sing/blog as each of them) but actual, genuine, fragile depth.
Unfortunately, I am not heartened by the latest single and video:
Is this a student film? Posing with your hair in your face and looking around does not a music video make! A sparkly American flag jumpsuit worn in England does not depth lend!. Everything seems blurry -- and I don't just mean the Flip-camera quality. Once more, Amos has dipped into the territory of the dangerously over-produced, verging on... Adult Contemporary Soft Rock.
Amos is a grown woman, a mother and a fixture in the music scene and you can't ask an artist to rehash her younger material. It would be dishonest if she was still rhythmically groaning and crooning about miscarriages and love affairs while banging around on her beloved boesendorfer. All the same, I'm reminded of one of my favorite bumper stickers: "Keep Portland Weird." Would Amos would do the same.
takepart by getting in touch with RAINN -- the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, of which Tori Amos is a founding member and spokeswoman. Worth magazine calls it "One Of America's 100 Best Charities"
Always interesting how much a "critic" can decide of what is good, and what is mediocre. Each and every album has a concept and an intensity that, quite objectively, very few artists do have. An array of colors, emotions, structures & destructures that cross the lines of what define music according to certain standards, and a creativity out of the ordinary. I am appalled to read :"Amos hasn’t put out a great record since 1996’s bizarre, guttural “Boys For Pele.”
Maybe you should try to let yourself being touched a little deeper. And eventually, reconsider certain comments about several albums mentioned in your article. I do not share this point of view and judge it simply pretentious & unjustified.
Words are one thing. Emotions, deep ones, are beyond words.
Music is the extra layer you probably did not hear.
Moonpie, I got your back...I'll hold your ear-rings for ya!
Somebody hold my earrings; there's about to be a throw-down!
This blogger chick is dissing my girl Tori and Flip Cameras in the same post?! You ain't right!
It's not about being weird, honey, it's about being innovative. Which is hard to do with people poo-pooing like you. Come up with some legit crit then we'll talk.
nice! sequined American flag jumper!