It's been a long time again. Luckily, this time I didn't have to reopen the site - or I wasn't met with a "Tore doesn't live here anymore" message the way I was the last time I popped back in. I always have plans. Great plans. And then life pops in and gets in the way. But this time, there has been so many great releases. So many. And some of them were surprise drops as well. But I want to start with an old favorite of mine. Tori Amos. And no, it's not because there is only a vowel difference in our first names. It is because I have been genuinely moved by here latest album, In Times Of Dragons.
In the beginning of her career, with albums like Little Earthquakes and Under The Pink (I am choosing to ignore Y Kant Tori Read - although it is charming in its way), she really moved me. Massively so. But sometime after Boys For Pele, I lost the connection I had to her music. I loved From The Choirgirl Hotel, but I don't remember much of it. It didn't stick the same way the first three albums had. And To Venus and Back really didn't click. Then I loved Strange Little Girls, the collection of cover songs, including Slayer's Raining Blood - although I have to admit that some of her choices for arrangements were pretty far out there.
So I lost touch with her music for a while, but around the time of the album Native Invader from 2017, I started picking up her music again. The time was right for me to explore the 16 year gap, more or less, and it revealed good albums. Not stellar, to me, but good. Ocean To Ocean followed, and I caught her on tour for the first time. Needless to say, I loved the show - and not even a boot on her broken foot slowed her down.
But In Times Of Dragons is to me an album that brings me back to the old days. This time, again, she has something to say, and she's not afraid to speak her mind. From an artistic point of view, I have always been a huge proponent of "show, don't tell," but these days, subtlety gets lost in the constant roar of what Tori Amos unabashedly label the patriarchy. She hits hard this time. Her words are direct. They are political. They are charged. And she is unapologetic. The lyrics in Shush make clear just how she feels: "Southern girls know what it means/when the patriarchy menacingly says/you shush yourself now."
And then there is the music. The piano churns out bass heavy chords, slogging along at a pace that is heavy. So very heavy. We feel the weight of what she is singing about. Her right-hand hits lighter notes - there is a sprinkling of treble notes as well. But there is very little light that is shining through.
And then there is the added weight of the final lines: "I knew a girl who wrote/'Silent All These Years'/Where is she." And on those notes, those words, the song ends. Having followed her embrace and empowerment of femininity since the beginning, those words, with the callback to Silent All These Years, hit hard. And that sets the tone for the rest of the album. This is prime Tori Amos. This is greatness. This is one of the greatest female voices of all time. This is what you NEED to listen to!
