boy you better make her raspberry POLL: Tori Amos - From The Choirgirl Hotel poll

Makes sense. You need to cover that song.

I always thought it was a tenor put through some filtering, hahaha.

lex i'd be curious to hear yr thoughts on anything from The Beekeeper forward... last one i liked a good bit was Scarlet

my thoughts on her 00s output:

strange little girls - i like this! some really interesting ideas, the fact that it was a concept album AND a covers album kinda balanced out the potential negatives of each - i loved how she turned all the originals inside out, a lot of the time it was using the cover version as an aggressive tactic to challenge the original song. her eminem cover is one of the most incredible things, also love "rattlesnakes"

scarlet's walk - this was my first active disappointment when i heard it cuz it seemed so conservative and unexperimental, a regression from the path she'd seemed to be going down. but it really does sound very, very lovely at its best - stuff like the last minute of "virginia" is next-level prettiness. i love a good two-thirds of this album, only complaint is length! some good b-sides scattered around the various EPs and web-only shiz that accompanied it - "seaside", "mountain" etc

the beekeeper - dreadful, i prefer not to think about it. iirc there was one song i'd salvage but i haven't got the faintest idea which one it was

american doll posse - this is actually good! overlong and you can lop off a good quarter of it but less than you'd assume. some absolutely gorgeous, light, drifting songs - "bouncing off clouds", "beauty of speed" - and some really awesome dark, brooding ones - "code red", "smokey joe". "teenage hustling" is pretty fierce and "big wheel" as about as great a POP SONG as she's ever written. "i am a M-I-L-F, don't you forget" lol

abnormally attracted to sin - not as bad as the beekeeper but i can't really remember much about it and can't fully cosign an album with that title :/

the xmas album - yeah, no

completely cosign lex's opinion of post-venus tori

fwiw the keepers off scarlets' walk for me:

a sorta fairytale/wednesday/strange/carbon/pancake/taxi ride/another girl's paradise/scarlet's walk/virginia/gold dust/mountain/tombigbee/seaside

that's, you know, a good-sized album in there. and the best of it is no fall-off at all.

I've decided I pretty much like all of Scarlet's Walk.

Unfamiliar with most of Amos' work but looking for an excuse to sample the post-'93 stuff, I loved lex's essay. Will download the album today. Thanks!

Oh man just thinking about "Playboy Mommy"...

i'm heading out now but was planning to uh email a few people about that later today alfred

lex T-Swift sang "A Sorta Fairytale" at some show recently

listened to part of this this weekend (first time in a good 10 years prob) and was struck that "Cruel" sounds like it could've been on Is This Desire?

lex T-Swift sang "A Sorta Fairytale" at some show recently

whooooaomg

i've always thought of FTCGH and ITD? together - both my fav albums by the artist, both the "experimental excursion into electronica" but in such a weird and singular way, neither recognised for their innovation at all

great writeup, lex! 'hotel' still gives me shivers

lol there are 17 people on ILX who voted in a Tori Amos poll. #lossofrespect

#thendontposthere

Spotify is awfully kind to serious Tori fans.

played this last night after reading lex's article. only recently realized that "northern lad" is quietly one of the best songs on here. i think its contrast to the darker, percussive vibe of the rest of the album heightens its impact. like it's kind of disarming in a way that it might not be amidst a less eclectic collection of songs. and such gorgeous vocals obv.

all right, songs that are insurmountable obstacles toward this being my favorite tori record: "black-dove"

yeah i definitely agree with lou that the straightforwardness - in sound and structure - of "spark", "jackie's strength" and "northern lad", and their sequencing scattered amongst the dense weirdness elsewhere, makes them stand out and seem very "classic".

i love "black-dove", i love the weird tangled rhythm when it finally kicks in and her southern accent is at its fiercest. "my blue dreeeeess"! also, amazing piano breakdown.

i love the tangled rhythm too but when it expands to the full band ("but i have to get to texas") it's the weakest moment melodically on the record for me.

which, this is a record of tremendous melodies forever, so i'm not even really slighting it. the accent bugs me, too.

anyway instead of talking about that we could talk about the piano breakdown in "hotel" and how i can't believe that it's played in any earthly time signature

which, is it 5/4? it's just played so well that you get lost in it

10/8?

Has anyone noticed how the swirly denseness of "Hotel" resembles Ray of Light-era Madonna (which happened to coincide with the release of this album)? She even sounds a bit like Maddie.

"Hotel" was first IIRC but yeah generally speaking OTM.

Musically (but not vocally) Kylie's "Too Far" was even closer. It seemed in the late 90s every female artist was doing these dark electronic numbers.

Amos' appearance on Austin City Limits (at least I think it was ACL) just after this album was released is phenomonially great - the full band is with her and most of the songs come from this album. Was surprised at just how great this album is and just how transcendental she can let herself get.

I guess I'm an underwater thing so I guess I can't take it personally

how do i forget the "and is it true / that devils end up like you" part of "she's your cocaine" every time

knocks me flat

anyway instead of talking about that we could talk about the piano breakdown in "hotel" and how i can't believe that it's played in any earthly time signature

that breakdown is so good. cascades of piano coming at you over and over again.

i love how deep her drawl gets on "raspberry swirl", when her voice actually sounds like paper ripping on the final "everybody knows i'm her friend, everybody knows i'm her maaaaaaaayyyyyyyn"

On first blush new single "Carry" is pretty forgettable. Or, rather, hard to remember while it's playing. Vaguely classical piano and strings background music, no tune.

Video is kinda o_0 in the sense of having absolutely no style whatsoever. Really like if yr mother was given $100,000 to make a video clip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gzKwOcCOYA&feature=player_embedded

Part of me likes it when she sings in that unaffected style

the clear singing is probably the best thing about it. the "classical" aspect of the new record wildly overblown on this evidence, it seems really slight and simple, esp compared to something like "yes anastasia" or "muhammed my friend". i hear a tune! not a great one but she's meandered far more aimlessly than here. the lyrics i picked up were TERRIBLE and the video is an embarrassment.

...I don't mind it. The strongest Tori records seem to have been borne out of a period of intense personal drama. When I see Tori looking like Michelle Fairley, playing bland music on piano, singing in this calm style like she doesn't have any angst or hunger in her life, I can't really get too upset about it. Won't buy it, but it's like "I'm happy that girl is momming it up in a castle in Ireland somewhere."

You know what I mean? I'm sure she'll make an awesome "I hate my daughter's new boyfriend" album in 2016.

The strongest Tori records seem to have been borne out of a period of intense personal drama

idk about that - it's the accepted wisdom but y'know i loved to venus and back which was written and recorded after she moved to cornwall in marital bliss etc. i think her more disappointing choices have been down to getting old and surrounding herself by the same small team who don't push her out of her comfort zone.

this new song, however, is more like it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t2WjbZKpkI

In that new video it seems that nobody has told Tori where the camera actually is and she's looking at a lyric sheet instead.

Oh Tori, be less terrible.

These songs are leaving me less than optimistic.

I've been revisiting American Doll Posse and Scarlet's Walk, and they're much stronger albums than I initially gave them credit for. She just needs to edit. From the Choirgirl Hotel is an example of her putting out an album with no filler, and thus making it her greatest piece of work.

boys for pele is also 18 tracks but i don't think i'd consider any of them filler

I haven't listened to Boys for Pele in ages, so I don't really remember if i considered some tracks as filler. Except for "Mr. Zebra" which I hate hate hate (I know Tori fans love it).

As for her first two albums, they're nice and compact but I don't think they have the level of songwriting that Choirgirl has. I mean, when I listen to "Crucify" now I just feel like a sullen teenage girl being talked down to.

"she needs to edit" OTM

wow just hearing ..Doll Posse for the first time after lex's recommendation upthread and some of it's great! much better than 'Venus..' for example.

The strongest Tori records seem to have been borne out of a period of intense personal drama

idk about that - it's the accepted wisdom but y'know i loved to venus and back which was written and recorded after she moved to cornwall in marital bliss etc. i think her more disappointing choices have been down to getting old and surrounding herself by the same small team who don't push her out of her comfort zone.

agree w/ lex here. i haven't listened to anything beyond Scarlet's Walk with careful ears though. also, To Venus & Back is gorgeous

OK, so To Venus And Back is an exception. Even then, best tracks on it strip-mine certain dramatic life-events ("Bliss", "Glory of the 80s", "1000 Oceans")
I can't think of any other singer-songwriter for whom the adjective "confessional" is so often applied, and accurately.
Lex you yourself focused on the irl drama as reflected in "Spark", "Playboy Mommy"
I'm not saying she can't write a fictional song, or an observational song ("Josephine", "Juarez" are both 100% amazing, plus hundreds more)
But when I see the quintessential "confessional" singer-songwriter getting all mundane, as in those clips above, I feel similar to how I feel about latter-day Alanis
i.e. "she seems to be doing well"

I am bordering on uncomfortable talking about this, ha!

What would be bestest, of course, would be if she completely turn her back on any cult-of-personality appeal and instead play to beat Meredith Monk at her own game

^^inclined to agree

also HB tori! she's 48 today.

Ugh. To Venus and Back is like, the worst thing ever.

american doll posse - this is actually good! overlong and you can lop off a good quarter of it but less than you'd assume. some absolutely gorgeous, light, drifting songs - "bouncing off clouds", "beauty of speed" - and some really awesome dark, brooding ones - "code red", "smokey joe". "teenage hustling" is pretty fierce and "big wheel" as about as great a POP SONG as she's ever written.

^^ vigorously otm, i was worried about the direction she was going in after "the beekeeper" but a large percentage of the songs here are really strong.

speaking of "the beekeeper," that album really rubbed me the wrong way, production and songwriting both. the first thirty seconds of "cars and guitars," for example -- ergh it makes me itch.

Lex you yourself focused on the irl drama as reflected in "Spark", "Playboy Mommy"

i guess the thing, especially with "playboy mommy", is how she wove the confessional into the fictional/observational so well: i think she performs in such a confessional way that it's been easy to overlook how a ton of her actual words actively shy away from it. and on TVAB, the IRL events she drew on for "bliss" and "glory of the 80s" were memories more than stuff actually happening to her at that time, while eg "lust" and "concertina" showed that she could still channel her contentment into exciting music.

i think what she's lost since then is whatever enabled her to throw completely oblique, batshit stuff out there as though it was totally normal: starting from SLG, what's characterised her approach to her work is her insistence on over-explaining it. i don't really know what that quality was in the first place - not giving a shit about "meaning"? taking loads of psychotropic drugs? i've never heard meredith monk but i agree that i'd like to see her ambition channelled into her music more than the concepts.

Last para OTM. And whether this is just a resulting perception or reflective of something underlying, I think the insistence on these overarching album concepts makes it harder for the listener to care about any song as a song - the length of the albums also being an issue here.

Worth noting that Under The Pink is not a confessional album at all with the exception of "Icicle" (maybe "Bells For Her") and works brilliantly.

what's fun about boys for pele is that she deals with all these terrible, recent events in her life at a tremendous rhetorical distance, so there's a kind of confessional vertigo

choirgirl is a bit more literal and grounded but that also serves the material there.

Ha, while I was thinking about bridges earlier today, I briefly considered an alternate reality in which instead of going solo after Y Kant Tori Read, Tori became an industry writer who was brought in on other peoples' sessions as a specialist in fixing the problem of "this song has two parts, but should have three", had a solid 8-10 year run of cowriting credits, then got forced into retirement by Swedish Math.

― New York Review of Wooks (swim), Friday, 8 October 2021 03:11 (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah! "Tear In Your Hand" is always the go-to example for me, the way it appears to start as a fairly conventional post-Elton John pop song and gradually, almost imperceptibly becomes more ambitious and complicated: the way the melodic shifts are so intimately locked into the shifts in the lyrics (e.g. "maybe it's time to wave goodbye now" or "I know, I know you well - well, better than I used to...") as well as into each other. Until you realise that she's also picking up (consciously or otherwise) on the compositional ambition of Rickie Lee Jones' "Living It Up" and "Pirates (So Long Lonely Avenue)" but replacing the vertigo of those tunes with a kind of sweep-of-inevitability, more convertible sports car speeding through the Alps than rollercoaster.

I never even noticed the uneven beats in the bridge of "Hotel"! The rhythmic displacement in this song that I always loved was her phrasing of "I guess that what I'm seeking, guess that what I'm seeking...isn't here."

a profusion of new melodic sections and overlays

"Almost Rosey" on American Doll Posse is the song of hers I always think of this way. Each new section introduces rhythmic, harmonic and melodic ideas to the song to increase its intensity; it's like a series of bets being laid down, and she wins each one.

well i know we're dying
and there's no sign of a parachute