Movement 100
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Robert Jones reviews Tori Amos' latest, From The Choirgirl Hotel<br />
Lyrical Chaos<br />
TORI AMOS: FROM THE CHOIRGIRL<br />
HOTEL<br />
Produced by Tori Amos<br />
WEA lnternational<br />
Tori<br />
I<br />
Amos is back with a new<br />
collection of songs which are as<br />
commercial as this artist is<br />
likely to get. This is a good<br />
thing. as commercial these days-as in<br />
days past-often means the rehashing<br />
of cliches to target a specific<br />
demographic. From the Chiorgirl Hotel<br />
lives in another galaxy when compared<br />
to this kind of categorisation. Amos<br />
stands on her own, love her or hate her.<br />
Where the dance sensibilities of her<br />
successful album, Professional Widow<br />
are not the dominant sound on this new<br />
disc, Amos has made a progression<br />
toward the full-band sound here, as well<br />
as keeping with the stream of<br />
consciousness style of lyric writing with<br />
which the artist has become known.<br />
Made largely in the UK-Amos and<br />
her new husband now ensconced in<br />
Cornwall- the music is a mix of<br />
American accoustic sound, thanks to<br />
the ever-present Bosendorfer piano, and<br />
the more European electronic experimentation<br />
with vocal effects and tape<br />
loops. lt's not drum and bass but<br />
shares the same kind of energy, if not<br />
the pace, on tracks like " She's Your<br />
Cocaine" and "Raspberry Swirl" which<br />
are songs concerned with rhythm, sonic<br />
variety and. frankly, sex. This is in<br />
contrast to the "pretty", introspective,<br />
tune-oriented direction of her past work.<br />
It is this juxtaposition which makes<br />
the record interesting. Again, the band<br />
play a more important role. Gone is the<br />
"girl at the piano" familiarity of Amos'<br />
sound. More to the forefront are the<br />
more bass heavy backdrops, garnished<br />
with a serrated guitar which suggests<br />
Andy Summers,. This is not to say that<br />
we don't hear some gorgeous piano, but<br />
the voices here are more varied. We get<br />
pedal steel ("Playboy Mommy"), stings<br />
("Jackie's Strength"), and multi-layered<br />
vocals (throughout) which range from<br />
the sweetness on tracks like "Northern<br />
lad" to Shirley Manson-esque growls on<br />
the previously mentioned "She's Your<br />
Cocaine" where Amos barks "cut it<br />
again" to bring the track to a sudden<br />
end. The tunes are still here, we just get<br />
them wrapped in a more colourful package.<br />
The expectation to find meaning in a<br />
Tori Amos song is where the artist<br />
draws clearly demarcated lines. Do her<br />
odd phrases on songs such as Cruel<br />
("lover brother bogenvilla my vine<br />
twists around your need") or Liquid<br />
Diamonds ("this is madness a lilac mess<br />
in your prom dress and you say I guess<br />
l'm an underwater thing") fire your<br />
imagination and give you a sense that<br />
they mean something at some deeper<br />
level? Or do they just annoy you and<br />
make you think your being hoodwinked<br />
into looking for something that was<br />
never there to start with? These two<br />
reactions often occur in varying<br />
degrees during the length of the<br />
disc. This kind of lyrical chaos<br />
may be a symptom of an artist<br />
who has come from the small<br />
town of Newton, North<br />
Carolina in America's bible<br />
belt. Amos is no longer<br />
interested in pinpointing<br />
single truths as she is in<br />
putting words together that<br />
simply sound good and<br />
create images in the mind of<br />
the listener. The voice here is<br />
not a didactic instrument, it is<br />
a musical instrument, not<br />
singing to the brain but to some<br />
other part of us which we know<br />
less about. This can be uncomfortable,<br />
like Andy Warhol's soup tins and<br />
Jackson Pollock's spatters of paint. But<br />
it makes us react, it doesn't allow for<br />
passivity.<br />
Having said all this, the songs do<br />
appeal to the part of us who want a<br />
good story, but the lyrics do not<br />
clearly outline people and events with<br />
the anticipated signposts of traditonal<br />
storytelling. lnstead, it opts to take<br />
the listener by surprise in various<br />
ways. On songs like "Jackie's<br />
Strength" Amos considers the impact<br />
of Kennedy's Camelot and its eventual<br />
fall in a way which takes the form of<br />
childhood memories and the expectations<br />
of childhood, as opposed to the<br />
bludgeon approach of Oliver Stone.<br />
The classic American ideals which the<br />
Bouvier-Kennedy marriage, on the<br />
surface, embodied are coupled with<br />
"mooning" the image of David Cassidy<br />
on the lunchbox of a schoolmate. This<br />
is a kind of Americana with a twist<br />
and demonstrates this sort of<br />
movement 13<br />
I<br />
unexpectedness in it's lyrical<br />
approach.<br />
Another example of this unexpectedness<br />
is on the song "Nothern Lad"<br />
which employs the folk traditions of<br />
the ideal lover who becomes lost and<br />
adds lines like "But I feel that<br />
something is wrong/ But I feel the cake<br />
just isn't done". The unexpected is<br />
used in equal value here. Where does<br />
the baking methphor come from? There<br />
is no greater or lesser value given to<br />
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language<br />
here,<br />
there are just<br />
words put together in such a way so as<br />
to challenge the conventions of what<br />
we expect a methphor to be. This again<br />
may make us uncomfortable, but it<br />
shows the true range of language as it<br />
may appear in modern songwriting.<br />
It is this unexpectedness which has<br />
made Tori Amos such a standout<br />
among often angst-ridden, earnest<br />
songwriters. We don't know what she<br />
is going to do next, and this unexpectedness<br />
strangely becomes its own kind<br />
of expectation. lf Amos can continue to<br />
draw the line between those who "get<br />
her" and those who don't as she has<br />
managed to do here on From the<br />
Choirgirl Hotel, then her work will,<br />
likewise, continue to be vital. El<br />
Robert Jones is a writer and poet based<br />
in London