Movement 100

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