From the Choirgirl Hotel

Tori Amos

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 5, 1998)
• Original Release Date: May 5, 1998
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Atlantic / Wea
• ASIN: B0000062S6
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (392 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #16,725 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #71 in

  Music > Alternative Rock > Singer-Songwriters

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
For Tori Amos, sex can be a weapon, a spiritual offering, or an act of protest. It's certainly been the singer-pianist's big subject since her 1989 debut Little Earthquakes. But while her earliest compositions tried to punch every emotional hot button at once and came off sounding turgid and overblown, her new album packs a greater punch by toning down mock-symphonic excess in favor of stark, haunting tracks that contain veiled mysteries. Love cuts both ways on Choirgirl. Songs such as "She's Your Cocaine" and "Cruel" view relationships as vicious power plays, while the protagonists in "Playboy Mommy" and "Northern Lad" desperately seek salvation via emotional connection. Hypnotic, affecting, and frequently gorgeous, From the Choirgirl Hotel is Amos's most accomplished album to date. --Marc Weingarten

Spin
Choirgirl ... is less fey ... and her vocals don't get whipped so much into that register known as "upper tiramisu." That the messages are less pointed and the presentation less frilly makes for more universal appeal.... [T]hink of this as simply a rock record, which means its meaning is found in noise. You will find yourself engaged in old and favorite habits--dancing around; singing along; dropping through all the normal, miraculous rock'n'roll escape hatches.... [T]his is something to believe in.

See all Editorial Reviews

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best evidence for the argument of Tori Amos as Genius, June 27, 2006

By	Michael B. Collins (Placentia, NL Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Have you ever wondered what the "fuss" about Tori Amos was? Have you perhaps heard one of her more successful singles in recent years (say, A Sorta Fairytale or Sleeps With Butterflies) and perhaps, blasphemy of blasphemies, thought she was a bit lightweight, a bit trite, a bit, dare we say it, uninteresting?

Well, if you did think those things, you would be wrong, and From the Choirgirl Hotel is the album to prove that to you. Choirgirl is a lot of things, but lightweight is not one of those. It is a dark, dense, intense, harrowing, experimental and adventerous trip, where your guide is 1/2 Sylvia Plath and 1/2 Chopin, with dashes of Massive Attack and Jimmi-Hendrix-if-he-had-taken-up-piano (for flavour).

I am an unabashed Tori Amos fan. I will admit that I'm biased in her favour. I would rate all of her 8 major studio albums from "good" to "amazing," having come to her music as a hard-core piano student during the mid-90's, when songs like "Blood Roses" and "Father Lucifer" seemed more like Bach and Debussy than like anything else on the airwaves at the time.

But why chose this album, then, as it marks the now 8-year trend of Tori moving away from the baroque, challenging, symphonic compositions that characterized her first three albums? Choirgirl was the start of her break for the mainstream, a move that culminated in 2005's disappointing MOR-mush of "The Beekeeper." It seems rather odd that I would venerate it above all others.

I do so because, while 'Choirgirl' is one of Tori's most accessible albums (especially for fans of dark alternative rock), it also shows her at the top of her game as a songwriter and instrumentalist.

Even though, for the first time, the piano took a backseat in some songs and was entirely absent from one (the slinky, sexy "cruel"), this album also contains some of her most breath-taking passages at the keyboard. Listen to the bridges of "Spark" and "Black Dove," the improvisational sections of "Liquid Diamonds," the piano breakdown in the 4th section of the multi-movemental "Hotel," the lithe, graceful playing of "Jackie's Strength," and the accomplished jazz stylings of "Pandora's Aquarium." All of these moments stand as testament to the fact that Tori started her life in the world of music at age 3, as a child prodigy, and that, if she had applied herself in a different direction, she could legitimately make it as a concert pianist with a classical repetoire.

This album is hard-hitting. Each track is a gem; the weakest of the set would be a standout on any album by a lesser talent. What's more, she doesn't bog the album down with filler (as in "The Beekeeper") or sometimes lose herself in self-indulgent ramblings (as can be argued for "Boys for Pele"). Sure, the lyrical ambiguity is here as per usual, but the ratio of comprehensible metaphors to head-scratchers is balanced in the former's favour.

"From the Choirgirl Hotel" is tight. Over the 50-odd minutes it takes to play the album from start to finish, its 12 tracks are 12 musical punches to the gut, and if you give it your time and your attention, I'm sure you will finally understand what the fuss about Tori Amos is.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What else to say?, April 7, 2000

By	Dan Motsinger (Carlisle, PA) - See all my reviews

Honestly, there is not much that I can say about Tori Amos that I'm sure hasn't already been said concerning her brilliance, emotional overflow, and the adaptation it takes to enjoy her music. It is hard for me to say which of her albums is her best, and perhaps it is no coincidence that my three favorite songs of her's are all on "Choirgirl Hotel." "Pandora's Aquarium" is simply beautiful, with lyrics such as "Line me up in single file with all your grievances..."That line alone gives the song such a beautiful feel.

But more appropriately, there is "Liquid Diamonds," probably the unspoken hero of this cd. Her piano and the drums in the opening part of the song are transfixing, and her lyrics just blend in so perfectly, "There's a secret in me, It's plain to see that it is rising, but I must be floating, Liquid Diamonds."

And finally, the other song that grabbed me was "Hotel." It is interesting if you listen to that song all the way through its transitions and instrument sounds make it seem like pure musical story telling, with a feel of pain and curiosity throughout the song, and then this wonderful sensation of relief and survival in the last few moments.

Despite the fact that all of the songs on "Choirgirl Hotel" have their own unique and heartthrobbing, emotion-wrenching styles, Tori Amos has achieved with her fourth album something that can only be described as special.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars yay., August 16, 1999

By A Customer

this cd is beautiful. i was very very apprehensive about buying it after reading all of these negative comments, about how tori's changed. very true. but if you look at it, each album has shown growth...LE was her debut...UtP added some rock...BfP added more instruments..and this album adds the band. so what? after her preceeding three albums, i didn't know what else she could do - i mean, come on, there are only so many songs that one can do with just a piano and her voice. and i know, that's one of the things that made tori unique. and many of her fans like her because she's unique; not like ANYONE else out there. (even kate bush - i like kate, but she sounds like tori did in her YKTR era, not now.) are you even aware of how many artists are using just their voices and their pianos? or just guitars? look at jewel. fiona apple. blah blah blah. tori started the trend. and she's moved on. she still doesn't sound like anyone else i've heard of. anyhow, this work is beautiful..."Playboy Mommy" is a tearjerking track..and "iieee" strikes me...it's amazing. buy this. you won't be disapointed. = )