Tori Amos

1994: it's hard, if not impossible, to argue against the pivotal role this year came to play in the evolution of the most disparate forms of that great melting pot generically labeled "rock". From Bark Psychosis to Nine Inch Nails, from Low to Portishead, taking in Soundgarden and Beck along the way, the convergence in a single season of records that each managed to set new benchmarks and issue fresh challenges to generations to come borders on the implausible, if not the miraculous.

And it's a "miracle" that, in its daring alchemy, carries with it a touch of red too. Red like the fiercely red hair of Myra Ellen Amos, known simply as Tori Amos, one of the songwriters — if not the songwriter — who, as the last century drew to a close, helped ferry the songcraft of the muses of the past toward a more forceful, impetuous and passionate form of itself, redefining both its themes and its aesthetic. But before getting into the whys and hows, we need to take two steps back.

By the time her second solo album was about to come out, Amos was anything but a novice. She had a long apprenticeship behind her, playing bars across half of America (from Los Angeles to Maryland), and had even managed a kind of double debut: first as the brash frontwoman of synth-pop outfit "Y Kant Tori Read", then flying solo, accompanied only by her trusty piano through her own little earthquakes. It was experience that set her apart from being just another pretty chanteuse good for one nice record and nothing more.

Rather, in those twelve ballads, in that feverish baring of a sensually tormented soul laid out in black and white across the whole of "Little Earthquakes", lay the promise of tensions and passions still waiting to be uncovered, of unconfessed secrets and fresh ways of looking at the world. The groundwork for a truly sensational record — already hinted at in those intimate tremors — was a solid reality.

Indeed, if her first act was never short on original melodic ideas (and there were plenty, just look at the thoroughly unconventional way Amos approaches piano ballads like "Silent All These Years" and "China", ballads that in other hands would have come off as mere Kate Bush copies), nor on interpretive depth (just "Crucify" alone would be enough to silence any number of piano-playing waifs), what was still missing was that quid, that necessary spark to turn a great record into a masterpiece.

And the spark, in an almost Dickinsonian way you might say, arrived right on cue with isolation: an escape from the chaos and frenzy of the city, to a hacienda in New Mexico, to dig as deep as possible into the most hidden corners of the self and let poetry surface from them, pure and uncontaminated. And so, without any forcing, but with the urgency of someone with something gripping to tell, her girls emerge — the twelve confidantes who chose to reveal themselves to the world and cast their message to the four winds.

The tormented introspection that had permeated Amos's music just two years earlier thus reaches an unmistakable turning point: where once the chill of an endless winter had suggested emotion and indignation tiptoeing quietly, now it's a stubborn anger, the first stirrings of a fierce rebellion, that stirs up the small stories running beneath the skin. And from small, they end up becoming big — enormous, even. Having deftly moved past the romantic fairy tales of Kate Bush, and having set aside the influence of Joni Mitchell, the American songwriter forges, on this second major outing, a singular kind of songwriting that would go on to be hugely influential. Because while it's true that the early '90s saw young women armed with their own bile — and little else — blossoming everywhere, very few managed to channel that resentment into an artistic statement with real musical merit of its own.

The riot grrrl/grunge epic that was raging across America in those years thus reveals its more calibrated, more "measured" side (take that word with a grain of salt) at the dawn of 1994, when "Cornflake Girl" — the lead single for the album (at least in Europe; in the States that job went to "God") and destined to define the songwriter's career forever — hit record store shelves. A mandolin riff, a drum pattern swung in 4/4, and that piano dripping with feeling at every note: all impeccably crafted, with some distinctive stylistic choices, but, at least at first listen, far too polite to be compared even remotely to the searing guitar assaults of that other band from Washington State. Then the chorus kicks in, that voice stretching into a liberating cry ("you bet your life it is, you bet your life it is, ooh, you bet your life... it's a peel out the watchword, just peel out the watchword") and suddenly that soft/loud dynamic which defined an entire era of rock doesn't seem so out of place after all, even without the overwhelming backing of six electrified strings.

In fact, it's precisely in bridging the most peculiar and daring forms of the singer-songwriter tradition (mainly of an irreverent '70s stripe) with the existential disdain that defined the grunge generation that "Under The Pink" arrives at a distinctive reading of its own zeitgeist — decoded with a thoroughly renewed sensibility on every level (stylistically first and foremost, naturally), and delivering some of the most visceral, inspired lyrics of the era. The dialogue that unfolds between the piano (a Bösendorfer, an absolute object of devotion for the songwriter, one she would never part with again) and the voice — freer than ever before to explore its full range of expression — ultimately plays out like a clash between two personalities each with a life of their own, a relentless battle in which neither contender comes out on top, but which perhaps for that very reason feels essential.

It's from this singular duel that the raw jolts of "The Waitress" emerge, built on the nervous tension of verses that perfectly illustrate the saying "the calm before the storm" (even if the lyrics then launch into a bitter tirade against another female figure who has very little calm about her), as do the sudden vocal surges that surface throughout the opening "Pretty Good Year" (inspired by a letter from Greg, a mysterious English boy convinced he'd reached the end of the road in his own life). It's on this polarity and unity between the two lead players that much of the record actually rests, even when — and it happens now and then — the melodic lines settle into a far less nervy, almost conciliatory relationship with their sonic counterpart.

Alongside the towering rock-spirited surges, Amos shows she has no intention of sweeping away the fertile instincts that had defined her debut, and so, set against songs with noticeably fuller arrangements (bass and drums take on a decidedly larger role than before), there's still room for that side of her artistic nature devoted to stripped-back essentials, in delicate ballads that temper the grand momentum of those tracks that rise up like sultry, sweeping j'accuse set to music.

The piano, altered into something like a glacial music box for "Bells For Her" (the album's only departure from her true fetish instrument), in its pained murmuring — with keys chiming like a thousand arrows loosed straight at the heart — tempers the visceral syncopations woven through the venomous tirade of "God", still to this day the most vivid, physical, unsettling of her attacks on religion, always experienced by her as something conflicted and oppressive ("God sometimes you just don't come through, do you need a woman to look after you", "a few witches burning gets a little toasty here, I gotta find find find, why you always go when the wind blows", she notes with bitter sarcasm in the song's first two verses). In the same way, the touching admission of her own emotional coldness toward an unnamed "him", in the aching classicism of "Baker, Baker", serves as a bridge between the pyrotechnic twists of "Past The Mission" (which in three and a half minutes boasts backing vocals from Trent Reznor, a reggae-tinged opening and a subtly arty hook, a device she would go on to master from then on) and the circling vaudeville swagger of "The Wrong Band", an ironic, impassioned metaphor for the lives of prostitutes, likewise punctuated by sudden vocal leaps.

And it's also in the broad range of themes tackled in the lyrics that Amos scores her second great triumph, showing off an innate poetic instinct. Not content with simply laying bare a complex personality in all its facets for listeners to pick apart (though that alone would have been enough), the pianist's banquet welcomes other guests too, each bringing their own personal contribution to the table. Philosophy, religion, sexuality, the condition of women all shift the center of gravity of her lyrical work well beyond the post-adolescent moping of so many of her peers. Always a keen observer of female psychology and the relationship between the sexes, though miles away from any cheap, banner-waving feminism, the redhead from North Carolina has never let up in that regard, penning lines that cast a gaze — at once powerful and vulnerable — on existence and the world at large.

And the gaze reaches an unprecedented focus precisely in the songs contained on this record (which four years later would be answered by the abysmal emotional chasm of "From The Choirgirl Hotel"), inexorably infecting the compositional fabric of the work. Stories of friendships that crumble, leaving behind gaps that are hard to fill (the famous blankettes of "Bells For Her"), women who would candidly admit to annihilating other women without a shred of remorse ("The Waitress"), parables of betrayal and marginalization ("Cornflake Girl" itself) multiply the points of view and the characters brought into play, with an unmoved mover coordinating the threads. So it happens that, amid failed attempts to reclaim lost innocence ("Icicle", built on the crepuscular tone of the piano line), narcotic abductions dictated by drones of bass and guitar ("Space Dog"), and sonatas torn open by an indefensible melancholy ("Cloud On My Tongue"), the Tori-demiurge finds a way to harness the formal rigor of her beloved-hated classical music pieces and channel it into a suite whose only truly "classical" element is perhaps its influences.

It happens, in fact, that over the nine and a half minutes of "Yes, Anastasia", a tribute to the Grand Duchess of Russia killed along with the rest of the royal family (according to various rumors, the sole survivor), the union of Debussy-esque minuets, resounding, epic orchestral sweeps and majestic melodic iterations sees Amos summing up, and at the same time pushing to its furthest extreme, the disruptive, impetuous force of her art: an art made of sharp edges and searing contrasts, but also, and above all, an art capable of restoring luster and refinement to the figure of the singer-songwriter at the piano, up to that point tied to only a handful of models that were hard to escape. With "Under The Pink" the trend undergoes a sharp reversal, paving the way for many new figures equipped with the elegant grand piano.

Following the significant commercial success achieved (number one in the UK; a long seller in the United States, where it peaked at number twelve but went on to sell over two million copies; reissued in Oceania complete with a second disc containing the various singles' b-sides), and the impressive live performances, which would earn her the title of "Goddess of rock", the world embraced with open arms the feline charisma of the singer-songwriter, who would follow this sophomore effort, throughout the '90s, with a series of works confirming her status as an alternative icon of the decade. And even though her muse dimmed with the arrival of the new millennium, the long wave of her first five albums, especially this teeming life beneath the pink, stands as proof to all the piano-girls who emerged afterward of just how unassailable a treasure trove of songs this still is. And forgive us if that's not enough.

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06/01/2013