Tori Amos is not a happy woman these days.<\/p>\n
When she first came onto the music scene (not including her
\nshort stint with Y Kant Tori Read) with
\nLittle Earthquakes<\/i>, her music was powerful but subtle. Songs
\nlike “Winter,” “Crucify” and her cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like
\nTeen Spirit” showed how much power one could pump through an
\nacoustic piano.<\/p>\n
With her following release,
\nUnder The Pink<\/i>, Amos seemed to throw away any radio-friendly
\nguise she had while continuing to question the image of God (or, at
\nleast, her image). The record paled in comparison to
\nEarthquakes<\/i>, and seemed very overblown.<\/p>\n
Now, with her third release,
\nBoys For Pele<\/i>, Amos has turned her subtlety into anger, and
\nhas thrown away yet another guise – melodies.<\/p>\n
The first single, “Caught A Lite Sneeze,” seems like it would
\nrepresent a good start to the album, and the song is good. However,
\nAmos seems like she wants to be the acoustic member of the “grrrl”
\nmusic movement.<\/p>\n
See Tori label someone in an unfriendly way: “Starfucker \/ just
\nlike my daddy” in “Professional Widow.” (I won’t even begin to
\nquestion what this lyric was about.) See Tori tell us a little more
\nabout her sex life than I really wanted to know on “In The
\nSpringtime Of His Voodoo”: “Got an angry snatch \/ Girls you know
\nwhat I mean.” What the hell happened to lyrics like: “When you
\ngonna make up your mind \/ When you gonna love you as much as I
\ndo”?<\/p>\n
Amos’s music has taken a turn – and kids, it definitely ain’t
\nfor the better.<\/p>\n
But wait, there’s more. While her piano playing is extraordinary
\n(as it always is), Amos no longer seems like she wants to sing a
\nmelody line that blends with her own piano part. As if this weren’t
\nbad enough, the vocals that used to go from a whisper to a plead
\nlike a hot knife through butter now sounds like nails on a
\nblackboard; at times I wasn’t sure if I was listening to Amos or
\nDiamanda Galas.<\/p>\n
There are some redeeming moments that make
\nBoys For Pele<\/i> worth checking out. Besides “Sneeze,” the
\nother single “Talula” captures some of Amos’s best work. Other
\nsongs that stand out from the muck include “Horses,” “Not The Red
\nBaron” and “Muhammed My Friend” (a song which, from a look at the
\nlyric sheet, seems to suggest a, aah, different tale of the
\nChristmas story. Check this one out yourself.)<\/p>\n
Amos is still a very gifted musician, and many of her
\ncompositions have not gotten the attention they have rightfully
\ndeserved. However,
\nBoys For Pele<\/i> is an album that doesn’t spotlight Amos the
\nartist, rather Amos the experimentalist. It reminds me of a saying
\nI think is often attributed to Yogi Berra: “If it ain’t broke,
\ndon’t fix it.” Amos would be wise to heed that warning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5650],"rating":[5616],"class_list":["post-35526","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-tori-amos","rating-rating-d"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35526"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=35526"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=35526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}