Tori Amos

hey

what's it's gonna take

til my baby's all right

ratatouille strich-i-nine

http://www.buzzfeed.com/sadydoyle/where-would-music-be-without-tori-amos

^^excellent

also, our own flamboyant goon did an epic facebook post on tori recently that i wish could be put somewhere public?

and who else wants to attempt to ignore the new album and its godawful title with me?

new album? (checks wikipedia) oh, ha ha.

if that's the real cover art add an additional "ha ha" to the above.

what new album?

Much of that Facebook post was drawn from the angst-ridden ILX post above (I was anxious and sleepless and in an airport and regret it.) I contest the "we ignored Tori Amos" bent of the Buzzfeed article because her first four albums all went platinum, and she consistently had enormous selling (and low overhead) tours that always put her in the top 5 grossing net profits, through the 90s. And honestly? as soon as anybody (Buzzfeed writer included) starts using words like "eccentric" and "strangeness" to describe the whole of what Tori does, they're no better than the AV Club guy saying "walking tarot card".

The problem with the word "confessional"-- and "cathartic" or any similar terms-- usually attached to female singer-songwriters-- gay ones too ;_;-- is that it effectively erases the artist's intent, suggesting that the writing is an act of therapy rather than an intelligent effort to create work. I feel similarly about, even, any biographical elements about music school, words like "eccentric", I mean, obviously you can't erase somebody's entire biography when writing about the album they made, but the feeling is just like "can we please just focus on the music as a product of the artist's intention, rather than a product of her/his biography?"

In a way it was always vindicating to me to read in the 90s about how much money Tori was making! it was like the one moment that RS or whatever had to admit that regardless of being a dizzy, faerie-loving mushy-femisomething, she is and was a successful businesswoman

Anyway, I always talk about Tori Amos, in all interviews, but usually only the gay press prints it. She pioneered something with "Little Earthquakes" that I've been trying to pin down for a decade: a marriage of indictment with self-indictment. The songs are rabid and raging but the rage is directed equally inward as outward... even the more overt castigations on "Precious Things" and "Me And A Gun" have a resigned quality to them, where she never places herself above the level of her perpetrators, and asks instead for nothing more than equality.

Something I didn't know was that Tori had written an autobiography! Ten full years ago? I am buying that immediately I had no idea.

sorry Lex I hate the album cover font choice but will totally be listening to this album and attending the tour

Best thing is just to focus on the music and forget about trying to second-guess the artist's intention, which is not always available and even if it is, is imo irrelevant to appreciation of the music

xps

goon tie otm

I've seen her live three or four times, and if anything "hurt" Tori Amos it's that her solo shows - which are the norm, right? - can be pretty intimidating for a casual fan. Lots of obscurities, lots of in-jokes, etc. But I saw her with her band once, in a small club behind "Choir Girl," and man did it rock.

dunno, the first time I saw her live I was a pretty casual fan and it didn't seem intimidating at all (actually, the fact that she was playing durham - which I realize is because she grew up near there but still - made things seem less intimidating back then, because I interpreted it as "wow, someone is playing within driving distance that I actually want to see")

Intimidating in the sense that a hit parade it is not. But maybe we're so far removed from Tori Amos hits that no one expects that?

how many hits would a casual fan even know? if you only know "the hits" you're going to surely go in expecting not to know 2/3 of the songs played

also, her commitment to touring and her live abilities (which haven't declined that much, certainly not compared to her recorded output) is basically what keeps her career going at this point.

but re that and I contest the "we ignored Tori Amos" bent of the Buzzfeed article because her first four albums all went platinum, and she consistently had enormous selling (and low overhead) tours that always put her in the top 5 grossing net profits, through the 90s

i think there's easily a case that she might be one of the most ignored artists right now in terms of the critical conversation given how successful she once was and how influential she's been. she basically doesn't get recognition except for the occasional one-off writer who used to be a massive fan. compare to how björk and pj harvey have been adopted firmly into the canon. these days no one talks about tori amos. i mean, look at her profile right here on ilm! only about 5 posters post in her threads and it's the same 5 each time. zero interest from anyone else. i've said this before, but she must be the only tim finney-approved artist to gain no traction on ilm more generally.

whenever i think of tori i unfortunately think of that dom review stylus posted.

Yeah, what are Amos' hits? "Crucify," "Cornflake Girl," "Caught a Lite Sneeze," "God," maybe "Raspberry Swirl" and (in England) "Professional Widow"? If you attend an Amos show in 2014 you'd expect album tracks and rarities.

"silent all these years" and "god" are the only ones i've heard out and about in the last ~10 years, and i think "a sorta fairytale" did well too.

I hear four or five of those with some frequency. Point being she's playing to the fans, not to make fans, IMO. Which is cool! Not unlike bjork.

I don't know if there is such a thing as a casual Tori Amos fan. Surely some are more casual than others but anybody I know who professes even a moderate interest could sing along to deep cuts. I mean, I've had random conversations with strangers where "Here. In My Head" and/or "Cooling" come up.

compare to how björk and pj harvey have been adopted firmly into the canon. these days no one talks about tori amos.

Bjork and PJ created some of their best work post-'99, Tori hasn't. I tend not to think about Tori in the same thought-bubble as those two, but think about her in the same boat as countless other now-unknown '80s/'90s essential songwriters of varying degrees of experimentalism: Sam Phillips, Jane Siberry, Me'shell Ndegeocello, Alanis Morissette, and especially: Lisa Germano. (I'm excluding men from this list because I have no men to include.)

If anything I'd argue that one of Tori's most notable innovations-- less notable than her lyrical creativity, more notable than "her use of piano"-- is somehow inspiring such a rabid and protective fanbase. I have no idea how that happened or if has been productive or desirable to either herself or her fan community

i've said this before, but she must be the only tim finney-approved artist to gain no traction on ilm more generally.

Actually this is true of most of the female "singer-songwriter" etc. artists I am into with a handful of exceptions. Tori is probably just the one who has had the most success over the long term.

Trying to decide whether the defining feature is that they're perceived as artists whose fanbase is overwhelmingly female with a smaller subset of gay males. That seems like a strong and obvious fit for Tori or, say, Ani DiFranco (who in most other senses is a very different artist). I simply have no idea whether it's true of someone like Jane Siberry but if I had to guess I'd say yes.

everybody has casual fans. i have listened to and enjoyed her first couple albums many times and can hum a bit of the non-singles but am not too passionate. and given how much more those albums have sold than her later stuff, there have to be a good amount of people like that.

I think that's partly down to casual fans and partly down to the fact that Tori became harder to like over time (at first for stylistic reasons and later for quality reasons).

I expect there are various points in her oeuvre where erstwhile fans tap out - it feels like her discography has pretty clear off-ramps after Under The Pink, From The Choirgirl Hotel and Scarlet's Walk in particular.

Yeah I bailed out after Under the Pink. I loved that and the debut and saw her play numerous times in London in the early 90s but Boys for Pele held no interest for me and I didn't bother with any of the later albums.

I owe lex a great deal for promoting From the Choirgirl Hotel at The Guardian three years ago. It's not great but it's inventive and astonishing enough to have sent me scurrying backwards to see what else I missed.

This is quite a common thing I imagine, but to me it always seemed like with, Tori's first four albums, each one would feel radically different to the album before, and then the next album would come out and would make the differences you'd perceived previously seem minor or less important. So in an odd way my sense of what kind of album Boys For Pele ~is~ was almost more shaped by hearing From The Choirgirl Hotel than by the actual album.

it's 100% a trend of ignoring of female singer-songwriters. unless you're lucky/connected enough to be canonized to the degree of a st. vincent or angel olsen, or perhaps country enough to find luck down that route, no one is going to write about you. nobody. maybe it's that everyone just begrudgingly covered them 15 years ago (the general disdain for lilith fair these days suggests as much), or maybe it's PR or musical trends or who even knows what. but it's not that she's ignored in the critical conversation -- most mainstream sites will post her album updates with the rest of 'em -- so much that all the acts she influenced are. the people influenced by the theatrical stuff get lumped in with amanda palmer and her fans as Places The Music Press Just Don't Want To Go, and as far as piano pop it's complete radio silence -- charlotte martin just released an album that's pretty good that literally no one, NO ONE, nowhere, is covering. (which includes me, but who would I even pitch?)

as for "inspiring a rabid, protective fanbase" that might be part selection bias -- in lieu of getting massive press coverage, those rabid, protective fans and their rabid, protective purchasing power are the only way you are going to be able to sustain a career. if you don't have them, you just get forgotten, as many artists have. (this is why a lot of acts in this vein are sustained partly/entirely by Kickstarter or similar ventures. in some cases that's their sole release channel, even.)

I'm not even sure why Angel Olsen gets critical attention tbh.

There's an Austin City Limits show recorded around the time of From The Choirgirl Hotel that's worth tracking down.

Incredibly, I thought the new one was the first Amos album since "Scarlet's Walk" in 2002, and then I realized it was her seventh!

We used to have a 'classic alternative' station here for almost a year, and if their playlists were anything to go on re: the new canon, Tori (along w/Hole & Belly) were totally absent.

Man, I'd say I hear Amos 10 times what I hear from Belly or Hole, but I don't hear the latter at all. Or veruca salt. I do hear down by the water by PJ Harvey.

"Incredibly, I thought the new one was the first Amos album since "Scarlet's Walk" in 2002, and then I realized it was her seventh!"

well you aren't missing all that much in between to be honest. I'm a fan but I don't really listen to any of those records. they're...alright at times. maybe the new one will be good? I kind of want to see her theater thing in London this year.

"american doll posse" is by far the best of her post-"scarlet's walk" albums. i feel like it got praise when it was released (at least from the people who still cared), but since it's ensconced between relative duds in her discography it doesn't get mentioned much anymore.

Not familiar enough with "American Doll Posse" to go deep with it, was at first turned off by lead track "Yo George", and grammatically frustrated by the first single "Big Wheel" ("I am an M-I-L-F"), but like-to-love a lot of it, especially moved by the transformation of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ycwJOkiZxc

into this ;_;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS9f_XQqVi0

feel weird about posting such a famous clip, but hey! for the casual fans in the room ;)

american doll posse was one of those massive cross-media concept albums, which turned a lot of people off (personally I thought that part was quite well-executed, but I'm pretty much alone there)

"Smokey Joe" and "Dragon" were the best tracks on that album, of course they were the bonus tracks.

they were? I'm pretty sure they were on my regular copy, it's just a long-ass album

(also, the downside of half the blogs and supplemental materials being hosted on outside sides like myspace etc means about half of it is missing, possibly forever)

Well they were on all the copies of the album but the "official" last song is "The Dark Side of the Sun" (which sounds like it should be amazing but isn't) then you get that "Posse Bonus" interlude and then those two tracks.

I skipped around through her past ten years of recordings this afternoon, listened to about 20 songs.

- super impressed by her voice on these latter day recordings, she (and her engineers) have figured it out, a perfect bone-dry sound, rich and expressive. I don't know whether it's her own efforts or that she's married to one of her engineers, but somewhere somebody spent a long and loving time with her voice and a pile of microphones and cracked the code.

- very turned off by all the revisionism: the remixing/fragmenting of her work on "Librarian", the remixing/remastering/rerecording/fragmenting on "Piano", the re-recordings on "Gold Dust" (though I prefer the new version of "Winter" to the original), the re-composing of older work on "Graces".

- overall, I was exceptionally bored by all the original songs. "Boring" is not a word I like in music crit because much of my favourite music is boring by traditional standards, but these songs are featureless.

But after I kind of gave up about it and walked away, I started remembering my first experience in listening to "Pele" and feeling the same sort of sensation of featurelessness. Songs ending abruptly and armed with no clear hooks. It was BB's "blunt force repetition" that made me fall in love with that record and-- spurred by katherine's comment about the impermanence of Tori records as digital content-- made me think that maybe, skipping around from Youtube to Youtube, I'm trying to digest this music with twitchy 2014 ears instead of immersing myself in it the way I did in the 90s, and that is doing Tori no favours? Anyway I'm changing my tactic

huh -- "boring" is not the word I'd use to describe a lot of the later material except maybe beekeeper or scarlet's walk. "embarrassing," maybe, at its worst, but even the embarrassing tracks have this kind of balls-to-the-wall commitment to them

Agreed., esp. for American Doll Posse.

at first i was going to say i feel comfortable calling "the beekeeper" boring, but really there's a lot there that actively grated on me (i don't think i hate any song in her oeuvre quite as much as i hate "ireland"). i tried pretty hard to love this album but i just can't take the lite-FM vibe that permeates so much of it.

idk, has anyone itt heard enough of her later work to form a POX from, say "the beekeeper" to present day? (while i think "scarlet's walk" sounds more like her later stuff than her earlier stuff, "the beekeeper" seems to be where both critical approval and sales start to decline). i'm interested in compiling my own, but i haven't listened to "abnormally attracted to sin" or "midwinter graces" more than once and i'd want to relisten to them first.

- very turned off by all the revisionism: the remixing/fragmenting of her work on "Librarian", the remixing/remastering/rerecording/fragmenting on "Piano", the re-recordings on "Gold Dust" (though I prefer the new version of "Winter" to the original), the re-composing of older work on "Graces".

what's disappointing is that this sort of revisionism has always been integral to tori's work - she's always given her songs radical reworkings live. her skills in reinterpreting others' work have always been amazing but she really applies it to her own as well. but gold dust and those remasters just seemed dry and pointless, like she was tooling around with her back catalogue because she had nothing else to do. she can still pull it off live though (that tour with the octet was great).

i think her voice has gotten much much worse in the past decade, she doesn't sound comfortable unless she's either at the top or the bottom of her range now? and i'm not into that glassy dead-eyed tone that was all over night of hunters.

american doll posse is definitely the closest she's come to a "return to form" since scarlet's walk - think it's telling that she was able to tap into a measure of what once made her great via an elaborate dressing-up strategy, ie when she could duck under the dead-eyed stepford couture image she's created for herself.

post-scarlet POX...all but one off ADP

big wheel
bouncing off clouds
code red
smokey joe
teenage hustling
dragon
beauty of speed
shattering sea
body and soul
father's son

bouncing off clouds
teenage hustling
beauty of speed
body and soul
smokey joe
give
[one of police me, fire to your plain, that guy, or welcome to england -- different ones of these are going to stick for different people]
starling
curtain call
flavor (gold dust version)