TORI AMOS - Abnormally Attracted To Sin

Someone stop Tori Amos! Before the poisoned arrows of her fans start whistling through the air, a bit of explanation is in order… What's at stake here is the preservation of one of the purest talents in female songwriting of recent years. An erupting volcano who set hearts ablaze for a whole decade, but who for at least the last five years has been firing blanks, in a disquieting megalomaniac escalation. If concision was never a virtue even of the wonderful Cornflake girl back in the 90s, it's undeniable that, starting with the tortuous (if not uninteresting) routes of "Scarlet’s Walk", Tori Amos has lost all sense of proportion, churning out increasingly long-winded and exhausting concept albums, in which even the few flashes of brilliance ended up buried under an avalanche of bloated, insignificant sounds. So, as her songbook swelled beyond measure, her music became ever more routine, risking the dispersal of the precious core of her art, contained within the four memorable albums she made from 1992 to 1998. A stubbornness that, besides costing her a sharp drop in sales, has also left bewildered a fanbase of unwavering devotion, the same one that had once crowned her "Goddess of rock".

But to no avail. After the 18 tracks of "Scarlet’s Walk", the 19 of "The Beekeeper" and the 20+3 of "American Doll Posse", here come another 17, along with as many visualettes (accompanying short films directed by Christian Lamb, included on the DVD of the deluxe edition) for "Abnormally Attracted To Sin", her tenth full-length work and her debut for her new label, Universal.

This time the "concept" is a definition of "power and success in interpersonal relationships", in a world "turned upside down by the economic crisis", layered onto her usual sexual and religious obsessions. An already flimsy connecting thread, one that inevitably frays over the 73 minutes of an album that nonetheless offers a few noteworthy lyrical touches, especially in its female character sketches.

Musically, though, we're once again faced with a stylistic free-for-all, punctuated by downtempo electronic drum machines and the drumming of her trusty Matt Chamberlain (the album's main collaborator alongside Tori's husband, sound engineer Mark Hawley). The arrangements, too, are as overstuffed as ever – strings, piano, guitars, electronics – with her voice sometimes emerging muffled, almost held back compared to the epic flights of her golden years.

The opening, however, is truly her most convincing since "From The Choirgirl Hotel" (of which, incidentally, this album seems a sort of watered-down lesser copy): the Portishead-style trip-hop of "Give" is an electric jolt that shakes off years of torpor, its powerful drumbeat and Amos's vocal swoops gliding over a sturdy bed of piano, synth and guitars. The single "Welcome To England" also holds up well, balancing synth-piano interplay with an easily catchy refrain. But already "Strong Black Vine" (an allusion to ayahuasca, the South American psychotropic brew so dear to Amos?) slips into over-the-top aggressiveness, underscored by strings and drums. And from here on, the listening grows increasingly laborious…

The tracks that manage to escape the limbo of anonymity are the ones where Tori goes looking for new solutions: the music-hall feel of "That Guy", the cabaret of "Mary Jane" and above all the hypnotic soft-jazz of "Lady In Blue", with its compelling closing crescendo of piano and electric guitar.

Even Tori the balladeer struggles to pull out of her hat those melodic wonders that made her famous: exceptions are the poignant "Maybe California", which builds the album's best track around strings and the drama of a suicidal Californian mother, and the title track, buoyed by a lovely Hammond organ line and a warm, velvety vocal performance.

Besides plenty of filler, there are unfortunately also some glaring lapses into kitsch: tracks like "Not Dying Today", "Police Me" and "500 Miles" probably wouldn't even have made the tracklist of the infamous – and by her own disowned – "Y Kant Tori Read".

Ultimately, simply cutting the tracklist in half would have been enough to produce an album that, while perhaps not memorable, would at least have been decent.

Ever smoother, sanded down of every rough edge, Tori Amos's music seems to be following, ominously, the same trajectory as her physical appearance, with that hair that was once fiery red and unruly curls now turned unnaturally auburn or sleek as silk wigs, and that pretty, sexy, impish face now polished to a shine like a porcelain doll. But beneath the ashes, the fire of a unique talent still smolders, and if she can rediscover it with the right conviction (and restraint), it may yet burn again.

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17/05/2009