The decline of Tori Amos and the new album I'll be avoiding
Ever since Tori Amos got a facelift (and came out of it looking a bit like a fembot), I think that the music just hasn't been the same. And it's not necessarily the music itself, although the previous album was unnecessarily raunchy and was accompanied by a concert that will probably leave a bad taste in my mouth indefinitely. But it's almost as if a tablecloth has been haphazardly pulled out from underneath her entire work. Somehow, I got the impression she would be OK with ageing gracefully; what, with all the talk about female empowerment and the measured tones. She came across as someone grounded and at peace with the natural cause of things. But now it's apparent that it wasn't true and that the image trumps all.
She has a Christmas album coming out in November. This will be the first of her albums that I will skip entirely. I will not buy it. And I like Christmas albums, but I don't want this rubbish infecting my holiday; I don't want to be reminded of her turn for the worst when I listen to it; and I don't want to be reminded of the generally unclean feeling I got from attending her concert earlier this year. I've heard a preview online, and it is many moons apart from the great interpretations she used to do. It sounds like it came from the same recording session as the last album. It's hard to believe that this is from the same musician that produced this classic.
What Tori Amos has now become is not compatible with the Christmas that I want to have.
This post was originally going to say "This blog is now closed." -- Survival Guy style. Maybe next time.
posted by mattbg @ 11:32 PM
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2 Comments:
I couldn't agree more... Tori's decline is long and exhausting and it's getting steeper and more painful with every new release. I wish I could be insensitive towards her artistic suicide, but I guess her music and personality have given me so many moments of pleasure that I just can't stand back and watch her become ridiculous without feeling a pain on my chest. It's been six years now down the drain...
I also agree with your impression about 2009 tour. I went on purpose to her concert in Rome a couple of weeks ago (from Spain!) only to find out that she's become a has-been. Her face is tight and trying to look as if she was at the beginning of her career. However, her voice and body language made her look as an old glory who doesn't believe in herself anymore and sings her old songs without any emotion. Her movements on the piano, which I've always considered full of grace, sexy and meaningful, look fake and forced now, almost made her look ridiculous. Such a pity...
Thanks for your article!
Xavier
Thanks, Xavier. I agree that it's sad. The strange thing to me is that she gets a very enthusiastic audience coming to her shows now, though she has been playing progressively smaller venues (Scarlet's Walk tour was in a stadium in Toronto, the next one was in a large concert hall, and the most recent one was in a medium-sized concert hall that people like Ray LaMontagne play in).
But the audience at the last show I went to was very much into the raunchy (and very loud and acoustically terrible) performance.
So, she has found a following... and a number of reviews found her latest album to be creative and adventurous, but all of the subtlety has been lost, and the piano-driven harmonies are all but gone now -- a few tracks on the latest album, maybe.
It's only really the latest album where it became too much for me. I thought "American Doll Posse" was pretty good. But that's also where I think the live performance started going really weird.
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