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With the release of 'Midwinter Graces' (2009), it has to asked: is there anything, musically speaking, that Tori Amos can't accomplish?
Though her recent projects may seem to have stumbled creatively (some fans would say Amos began to go into decline after 1996's 'Boys For Pele,' others, after 2001's 'Scarlet's Walk'), Amos has continued to produce unique, insightful, and exceptional compositions such as 'Playboy Mommy,' 'Cooling,' 'Purple People,' 'Apollo's Frock,' 'Indian Summer,' 'Marys of the Sea,' 'Original Sinsuality,' 'Garlands,' 'Give,' and 'That Guy,' to name only a handful.
In terms of lighter fare, few songs could be more instantly catchy, likeable, and radio-friendly than the instantaneously driving 'Bouncing Off Clouds,' a loving homage to such mid-1980s post-New Wave hits as Talk Talk's 'Such A Shame' and A-ha's 'Take On Me.'
In many respects, Amos has, as of 2010, created a body of work, which, if far less well known to the general public, creatively compares to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Velvet Underground, and Joni Mitchell catalogs. Amos has far outstripped artists like Marianne Faithfull, Rickie Lee Jones, and Kate Bush; Jones and Bush started out strong, but their creativity and compositional talent has been inconsistent at best, while Faithfull's talent appears to lie largely in her interpretive ability.
'Midwinter Graces' (2009) a remarkable Christmas/Solstice album, follows the multifaceted 'Abnormally Attracted To Sin,' released earlier in 2009.
While Amos addresses a number of traditional carols, including 'What Child is This?,' 'The Coventry Carol,' 'Emmanuel' and 'We Three Kings' in various but untraditional fashion, the standout tracks are easily those Amos has composed herself. In fact, the deceptively simple 'Snow Angel,' the epic 'A Winter's Carol,' and the highly cinematic 'Our New Year' are among her finest compositions in the last ten years.
Amos has long professed a belief in "fairies," and, despite its title, 'Snow Angel' may be the first song in which she actually addresses the experience of encountering these mythical, semi-divine beings. With stunningly subtle minimalist lyrics the Imagist poets would have appreciated, Amos has created the most beautiful song depicting 'daimonic reality' since Nick Drake's 'River Man' of 1969.
Early Amos-inspiration Kate Bush has admirably tackled the daimonic theme on a number of compositions, but Bush's 'Wuthering Heights,' 'Houdini,' 'Watching You Without Me,' 'Lily,' and 'The Red Shoes,' however enjoyable when taken at face value, are largely to 'Snow Angel' what the Three Stooges are to the Marx Brothers.
'A Winter's Carol' recalls Bush's epic 'The Ninth Wave' (especially 'Hello Earth') from 1985's 'The Hounds of Love,' but in tightly condensed form. Tackling the mythic landscapes of Sir James Frazer and Ronald Hutton, Amos leaves Christ behind to tackle the pagan cycle of the seasons; not Jesus, but the Summer Queen and the Holy King are the dramatis personae here, "passing the torch as it was intended," culminating in the rebirth of the light, "a gift of old, wrapped in ribbons of gold for the whole world."
Amos's climatic, vision of mankind momentarily brought together in a cosmic embrace is among the most stirring and profound moments in her entire recording career.
'Midwinter Graces' closes with on a melancholy but dramatic note with 'Our New Year,' which may be intended as the third part of a somber triptych which began with 'Gold Dust' in 2001 and continued with 'Toast' in 2005.
Despite a perplexingly plodding climax, 'Our New Year' may actually be the best of the three; after a poised beginning ("glasses raised, we all say 'cheers"), the music goes sideways in an extraordinarly winding manner, and the narrator's vision of a lost loved one waving in the distance becomes extremely gripping. In a halting but driving tone, Amos transports the listener to the immediate moment to experience the hope--the expectation--the certainty of recognition--and then the stunning realization of misidentification--"lately I'm sure it's you there, waving in the distance, the closer I get, disappointment, they just have the same color of your hair, and it tears, it tears."
Other standout cuts are an amazing rendition the Coventry Carol called 'Candle-Coventry Carol' and Amos's own big band-era 'Pink and Glitter.'
In many ways a return to form, 'Midwinter Graces' is highly recommended, especially to those who abandoned Amos after the release of 'the Tori-lite' 'The Beekeeper' (2005) and especially the maudlinly polemical 'American Doll Posse' (2007).
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68online
Des reprises et des nouveautés pour un album de saison réussi
Reviewed in France on February 20, 2010
68online
Reviewed in France on February 20, 2010
La préférence de l'artiste va vers "Pink and Glitter",(voir interview de 30 mn du dvd bonus).
J'aime beaucoup " Snow angel", comme une caresse.
Un album que j'apprecierai certainement aussi l'été, son caractère romantique le rend intemporel.
Il s'agit d'un beau digipack contenant 2 discs (dvd + cd 14 titres) et un livret.
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