_New Yorker_ Tori Review (was: Tori Amos reviewed by _US_ magazine)

[shane@sbgrad7.cs.sunysb.edu (Shane Bouslough)]

In article <66584@apple.Apple.COM> mdc@bsbbs.columbus.oh.us
	(Melissa D. Caldwell) writes:

>I must have missed that review.  Do you still have that issue 
>of Time, and if so would you please post the article?

The following is a review of _Little Earthquakes_ from the latest
issue of _New Yorker_ magazine. It is reprinted without permission
(so sue me :-).

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Tori Amos is a strange, strange case. The other day we were flipping
through the lyrics of the young singer-pianist's candid, stormy
album "Little Earthquakes." Amos is in the practice of capitalizing
a handful of words in each song, the result being that one can read
her lyrics in condensed form: "CRUCIFY... COURAGE... GOD... HEART...
LOVE... GUILT... I CRY." Or: "WINTER... DRIFTS GET DEEPER... CHANGE...
MELTS... SKATING... PROUD... WHITE... HORSES." Amos's lyrics are
largely imagistic, full of sex and death and not a few stunningly
frank turns of phrase. She has a gorgeous voice, but quite often --
what with her uneasy melodies, her sudden flights into the upper
register, her heavy, frantic breaths, and her little-girl whispers --
she sounds disconcertingly like Kate Bush. Her song "Girl" is the
sincerest flattery we've ever heard.

The other night, Amos opened the state side leg of her Little
Earthquakes tour with a solo show at the Bottom Line. (The performance
was videotaped for ABC's "In Concert" series, which gives you an idea
of the remarkable sendoff that this record is receiving.) Early on,
we found Amos's stage persona to be a bit off-putting, if only
because it so clearly was a persona. She flung her red hair around.
She writhed vividly against the edge of the piano stool. She did
some outre vocalizing that struck us as high-concept yodelling.
But the performance did an abrupt aboutface with "Me and a Gun,"
an a-cappella song about a rape, which she dedicated to "a
fourteen-year-old Irish girl." Amos's rendition was brutal and
lovely, one of the starkest, bravest things we've seen in some
time. With "Me and a Gun," Amos sloughed off her former showiness.
She performed the remaining numbers -- including wonderfully odd
covers of the Rolling Stones' "Angie" and Nirvana's "Smells Like
Teen Spirit" -- with a kind of sacred hush that marks her best
songs, those songs that sound least like Kate Bush and most like
Tori Amos.

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> Melissa Caldwell                         You want my reply?
> The Big Sky BBS (+1 614 864 1198)         What was the question?
> {n8emr|nstar}!bluemoon!bsbbs!mdc           I was looking at the Big Sky
> mdc@bsbbs.columbus.oh.us

--
Shane Bouslough       | #include <stddisc.h>
shane@sbcs.sunysb.edu | #include <funnyquote.h>