Gah!, can’t sleep, so now i’m blogging. I went to bed at 10pm, so very very tired, but my brain keeps ticking over. I think its because I’m so damn bored now that I’m back at work, but i’m too tired to meaningfully look for a new job this late at night.
Anyway, so there’s a new Tori Amos album coming out at the end of the month. Every gayboy and his pomeranian is going freaking nuts over it on the internet. The lesbians have more sense. Don’t get me wrong, I love Tori and her work, but I was quite disappointed with her last album, The Beekeeper. Yawn, ’twas very adult contemporary. The album before, Scarlet’s Walk, I thought was brilliant, but she went for this total America motif with the thing, so it verged a little into country at times, and rated well on the Adult Contemporary charts over in the US. I like a little bit of country (for the drama queen in me), but she went to a very beige place after Scarlet’s Walk. Admittedly, she has said in interviews that she wanted to pull back on the anger and obscurity and go a bit nicer and accessible for the Beekeeper as she was in a nuturing place for her newish daughter, and now it was time to bring the rage back as her daughter is now old enough to understand what mommy does. Anyhow, I’m waiting to hear the new album, American Doll Posse, before getting too excited about it. So far it sounds promising, but the one song I’ve heard, Big Wheel, is still very country and leaves me apprehensive.
The other thing that annoys me is that as promo for the new album each "doll" in the "posse" has its own blog somewhere on the internet, which strikes me as a trifle bandwagony, and may have been an interesting exercise two years ago, but now seems just a little naff. I think what she did with Scarlet’s Walk, and the associated website Scarlet’s Web, was much more progressive and interesting.
The things that do excite me about the whole thing are new music, and the big possiblity that I’ll be over in north america at the same time that she’s touring there, which would make it easier to a number of her shows, and then she’ll reportedly be touring here in september, and I could see her again, which would be awesome even if the new album ain’t that great.
It’s the next step up from the Strange Little Girls… if I’m not mistaken, Tori and Neil Gaiman gave them each a bit of a backstory. What’s the harm in letting her - let’s face it, virtually infinite - personae speak for themselves? I don’t know how you’d call it “bandwagony” - how many other artists devote an entire blog to their individual creations, especially to this degree?
The Beekeeper took aaaaaaaaages for me to get into, but then, I’ve found every album since Under The Pink progressively less accessible - except From The Choirgirl Hotel, which I fell in love with immediately (total rainy-day listening. Kinda wish we weren’t in a drought). I still think Boys For Pele was a weak album, even though it had some truly killer individual tracks.
You say “Adult Contemporary” and I think of Annie Lennox, Wendy Matthews, Sinéad O’Connor, Natalie Merchant, Deborah Conway (whom I’m certain is marketed as a country singer) etc… not exactly what I’d call Tori-ish. Tori is… terrifyingly… experimental at time: To Venus and Back, for example, was lovably electro-freaky, and also just a really great album. I haven’t heard Annie, Wendy, Sinéad, Natalie or Deborah do anything so severe.
But anyway, who gives a toss where she ends up on the charts - or even which chart? Modern music is too diverse to effectively categorise in that way… a point Tori proves rather well. My favourite artists rarely chart and their new tracks get one showing on Friday-night rage before vanishing into the archives forever, but it doesn’t bother me… though sometimes I wish they were a little more popular; it’d be nice to sing (?) along to, say, Me’Shell Ndegéocello, David Byrne or Tracey Thorn with someone else who knew the lyrics. A drunken group-singalong to something particularly-obscure-and-unconventional-for-the-age-group would be really nice… one of my close friends and I sometimes find ourselves singing “Spark” at medium-volume… and at New Years, after only two glasses of Moët (and one of Omni), this girl, whom I had never met before that night, and I turned “All These Things That I’ve Done” by The Killers into a duet. We were (easily) impressed, and I have to say… it was rather enjoyable. I’m not the sing-y type. Oh, and I rarely drink - it wasn’t until afterwards that champagne, even cheap champange, seems to have that side-effect of inexplicable “happy”. End bizarre tangent.
I think that little bout of verbal dysentery was to make some convoluted point regarding the insane diversity of music and how, if I find artistry which really grabs me - Tori, in this case - I embrace her tightly, not let her go, keep her (distant) company when she pops out to do her shopping and then (quietly) rifle through her garbage later on, searching for the hidden messages I’m sure she left, I mean, she can’t communicate through the regular channels because she’s being watched, dammit, watched by the clownsand I’m the only thing standing between her and rainbow-black-ops abduction because they want to question her for the political subversiveness of “General Joy”, but one day when this is all over, we’re going to sneak away to a private island somewhere in the northern south pacific and she can finish that album she’s been working on, about me, since just before the milennium, because it’s totally common knowledge (to us) that my reward, for realising “Hotel” was a cry for help, was to have a song written about me - either “Lust” or “Riot Poof”, can’t remember exactly right now ‘cause I’ve been up for 132 hours straight. Whichever; She’s going to re-record it acoustically, with me on the heavibreathaphone. Whether she knows it or not, whether she likes it or not. She owes me. I keep her alive. Don’t I? Yes, yes, you do and I’m totally grateful for it. See? We’re nothing without each other. Nothing! AND YOU CAN’T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM US, BY GOD I’LL SHOOT I SWEAR TO FUCK I’LL SHOOT DON’T COME ANY CLO-
*twitch*timeformorecoffee*twich*
*no blinking*
*no blinking*
*no blinking*
Comment by Send Your Hate To Me — April 12, 2007 @ 6:29 pm
It’s bandwagony because she give each character their own blog, and fricking everyone has a blog (or myspace) these days, so why does tori need twelve? Call me cynical, but blogging has become huge since her last album, and every fricking gayboy techgeek has one, and now they can friend the damn songs on myspace, ooohh, that’s so special. I love tori’s music, but I’m sick of all the tori cultists who can’t fuckin critique the marketing of her music. A lot of her work is way creative, and the concept of american doll posse is great, as was the concept of strange littls girls, but honestly, american doll posse is just tori getting to do what she originally wanted to do with SLG but wouldn’t do at the time cuz she wanted out of her contract. Her music is brilliant (mostly), but i’m not going to mindlessly cheer everything she does as uber oirginal and cutting edge, or even as interesting.
And when referring to the charts in america, one can clearly say it is much more representative of audience than in australia, as it gives radio play and requests a lot more weighting, so while you mightn’t think tori is adult contemporay, the audience her last few albums have been most successful with definately is. And they do like all those artists you mention. And I can point to absolutely brilliant albums of each of those artists you mentioned. Maybe nothing so severe, but they make different music.
And my Kylie room beats your tori island anyday mate.
Comment by Lukely — April 14, 2007 @ 1:48 pm