Comments | thirdreel: Abnormally Attracted to Sin

thirdreel

Abnormally Attracted to Sin

Jun 08, 2009 15:49

So what do we all think about the new Tori Amos album?

Comments 22

warsop June 8 2009, 22:53:29 UTC

I think she's foregone the craft of creating a single cohesive album. It just feels like a randomly-generated playlist to me. Part of that is its length, but most of it is the abrupt changes in style from song to song.

thirdreel June 9 2009, 17:04:22 UTC

I wonder if this is the result of a corner she's painted herself into. I mean, with a lot of artists, an album is pretty much a playlist of songs they've been working on. Jonatha Brooke's albums are all pretty much a gathering of her songs. (Except the latest one, which is all Woody Guthrie lyrics.) Nothing wrong with that. Except that Tori has been marketed as a statement-maker--that this album is a Statement On Important Issues--and while it worked a couple times in the past, she can't do it every time, and the promotion and packaging leads us to look for more cohesion than she's really supplying.

warsop June 9 2009, 17:43:08 UTC

I agree with you that Tori has been marketing herself as a statement-maker, and every album beginning with SLG has been a Concept Album that is comprised of Statements On Important Issues. There are ways to make statements without having every album be a Concept Album, and not every song has to be part of a Statement On Important Issues. I'm tired of the overwrought Concepts and Statements from her ( ... )

roadster_guy June 8 2009, 23:23:09 UTC

I think it's a pretentious bit of sometimes discordant and often inscrutable prose that will appeal to an extremely small portion of the general population, featuring lyrics that make sense only to her.

/hasn't heard it yet.

//didn't even know there was one.

;o)

muddyslush June 9 2009, 00:38:11 UTC

So far I really like how it starts and how it sounds musically, but by the middle I lose attention. I've only tried it a few times, though.

encyclops June 9 2009, 01:16:06 UTC

You got my short version already. I didn't think it was possible for her to top American Doll Posse in terms of terrible album title and packaging...and maybe she didn't, but she sure came close. I'd like to say those things don't matter, but they do, especially in someone as meticulous as Tori appears to be. What exactly does it mean to be "abnormally attracted to sin?" If "sin" weren't attractive, it wouldn't really be a problem. Maybe I should have listened to the lyrics of the title track to determine the answer to this question, but I didn't ( ... )

thirdreel June 9 2009, 16:59:36 UTC

My qualms about the title were lessened when I found out it's from Guys & Dolls. The phrase sounds lame when you think of it coming from Alternative Chick-Rock Provocateuse, but from a musical character its inflated redundancy seems appropriately campy and prudish.

On the first few listens, I agree that my impression was less "actively off-putting" than the last two. Which is certainly faint praise. But I'm liking it more and more as I listen to it.

warsop June 9 2009, 17:51:21 UTC

It's more that she has loads of ideas and no firm grasp on which ones are good, so they all end up on the record.

I think that this is a good summation of what's happening with her. She's got too many ideas, and she's in an echo chamber that won't force her to work on those ideas. I really think that she needs to (a) stop producing her own albums, and (b) try out another recording studio. She's in a comfort zone, and she needs to come out of it.

marvelboy74 June 9 2009, 17:57:38 UTC

I am over Tori Amos. The last album I bought was Scarlet's Walk and I didn't care for most of the album. If she pops up in my ipod, I'm usually bumping over her. I used to love Boys for Pele but now find it really inaccessible; my take on that is it must be listened to as a whole. I really attribute this to a change in tastes as I don't really listen to most of the music I listened to in college.