so do any str8 males here like tori too?

huge huge fan of 'little earthquakes', disappointed by much of the rest, especially the recent stuff. 'pele' has it's moments, but goes on forever and does my head in a bit. am not gay if it matters, despite heckles to the contrary from the occasional passing car.

and fwiw, i am most definitely not a "toriphile" in the slightest - i don't own any b-sides, eps, bootlegs - never even heard that nirvana cover!! i absolutely never listen to earthquakes - it sounds really out of date, and a bit too homogenized to me now. i never really cared about the opacity of the lyrics later on since i 'm usually indifferent about an artist's expressionism; the emotional reactions the music evokes in me has always remained predominant. i like the second, fourth and fifth records just fine, but the only album i consistently love is pele, and it has more to do with the harpischord and wack-o dark medieval armosphere than any fan-artist identification (in regards to sexual identity politics)

My splurge piece on "Tales of a Librarian" in Stylus can be found here: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=745

This seems to be the standard line, and it confuses me - for me her gratest period was between Boys For Pele and the criminally underrated To Venus And Back. Little Earthquakes and Under The Pink provided the blueprint, then the subsequent three albums tore it up. (I think this 'critical consensus' may be mostly due to most critics getting turned off by Pele then not bothering to listen to Choirgirl or Venus.) Like Vic I was disappointed with the lack of sonic headfuckery on Scarlet's Walk, though that may well have been her point given the road trip concept of the album, but I fear that from here on in it may be a long slow slide into contentment-inspired AOR.

Strange Little Girls is also unfairly maligned - a good proportion of the negative reviews I've seen of it are due to the reviewer taking the concept seriously, as if it was supposed to be a rigid, fixed idea. If anything it's the malleability of her interpretations which is the important thing.

I was sort of a Fan-with-capital-F in the years following Pele, though only in the sense of tracking down everything she ever recorded and getting disturbed by the hardcore 'Toriphiles' I encountered along the way.

(having typed all of this out I have just realised I'm exempt from this thread too, oh well)

(xpost - yeah "Time" is beautiful)

for me her gratest period was between Boys For Pele and the criminally underrated To Venus And Back. Little Earthquakes and Under The Pink provided the blueprint, then the subsequent three albums tore it up.

Amen. It continually bothered me that critics continued to devalue this period of her work due to the "cryptic lyrics' and "obscure imagery," etc while holding the first few albums up as the golden standard to judge all of her future work by since they appeared to be very singer-songwritery...but they would not only allow but also praise this inclination to shift styles if it had perhaps come from...what, a conventional pop-rock band? A dance-pop singer ? "Reinvention," thats right. Also, how exactly was anything - lyrics, imgery, melody, instrumentation - on early song-epics like "Yes, Anastasia" linear or "personal" in the first place? The constant comparisons made no sense when she had already started to showcase her eccenticities and predilections for song-poetry (as opposed to "personal, accessible lyrics") in such an obvious manner on her second album alone; it's almost though as if the critics had cast her in this one particular mold that female singers were allowed to inhabit, and since she wound up deviating soooo far off from their initial judgment that they could only call these albums "sub-standard" rather than question their own pidgeonholing of her status ("quirky, Joni Mitchell-y, 90s Kate Bush figure...wait, what happened?!").

For example, just look at the opening few sentences that Erlewhine uses to describe her in the AMG biography, and then read the reviews; (of course, I could also reference here the Pfork review of Choirgirl but I've brought enough hate to the table for now).

I fear that from here on in it may be a long slow slide into contentment-inspired AOR.

I don't really fear this at all, since it doesn't seem in her nature to keep going down one road for too long. Unless the mantle of social consciousness fearfully overtakes her, as noted above - that would be bad. I guess one clue as to where she's going is the new ones on the Librarian comp - what are they like? I should read Dom's review before posting more!

Dagmar Krause would kick her ass.

how many times did u score?

*shivers*

It may be a cliche, but like all cliches, it's based in truth.

But not all cliches are based in truth Alex! This is really lazy and dangerous thinking!

I maintain that the Tori/Kate comparison is based almost solely in the fact that most rock critics assume all female performers with mystical/fantastic pretentions sound the same. We wouldn't say Nirvana and Metallica sound the same because they both use guitars and are angry! If anything the Kate/Tori comparison rests on the fact that both are not easily pigeonholed into feminine/masculine stereotypes of how female performers should behave (what Reynolds and Joy Press describe as "fluxed up" artists).

There are a lot of artists who clearly *do* have a lot of similarities to Kate Bush (Happy Rhodes and Jane Siberry are two the pretty quickly spring to mind) which are much more striking than any such similarities between Tori and Kate.

but no-one compares either Tori Amos or Kate Bush to Stevie Nicks (who certainly has mystical/fantastic pretensions)! and ditto to what keith said.

Similarly, although not one I have, "Without you I'm Nothing" by Sandra Bernhardt is worth a fortune too as Tori is a backing vocalist.

Nuts fans with money. Classic or Dud.

The only reason Bush and Amos are cited together (and not alongside, say, Stevie Nicks and/or Joni Mitchell) is because Amos sounds dead simillar to Bush. This doesn't mean she should be taken out behind the shed and beaten within an inch of her life, or that I'm generalizing about women who sit at pianos singing about faeries and mysticism, but simply that their vocal styles are very simillar. I believe Tori herself has professed her huge debt to Bush at some point or another.

Ha ha but I do! I reckon Stevie and Tori are *much closer* than Kate and Tori. There's the same rather vague conflation of the personal and mystical (as compared to Kate's more structured approach to song-topics) and mixture of impenetrable imagery and stark confessionals. Compare, say, Tori's "Girl" with "Rhiannon".

The Tori/Kate link also breaks down if you run it in reverse: how is Kate like Tori? Which Kate songs sound like a Tori song? There's random early songs with a resemblance due to the use of piano but really the strongest is probably "This Woman's Work" - which itself sounds anomalous for Kate. Certainly what I would consider the *core* of Kate's work is quite different to that of Tori's.

Kill!

*to be honest i don't hear nyro at all on tori's first two

I'm not saying that - I'm saying that the two aren't so significantly alike that it needs to be used as a stick to hit Tori with every time people mention her. People don't dismiss Nirvana on the basis of their debt to The Pixies in every single thread on the topic. Tori synthesises far too many different musical threads to be reduced to such a simplistic equation. (and I'm not even saying that out of defensiveness really - I just think it's inaccurate and misrepresents what Kate Bush was doing as well)

We'll agree to disagree, won't we, sweetness.

That plus the faerie stuff makes for easy comparison.

Except... Kate Bush has no "faerie stuff"!

(Saying "girl singer x who conforms to what I think a girl singer should be like would kick Tori's ass" also = dud.)

The also have similar vocal qualities to their singing. For fuck's sake, THE FACT THAT IT'S A LAZY COMPARISON DOESN'T MAKE IT AN INVALID ONE.

Tori's backing vocals are where she really does sound like Kate Bush... "Father Lucifer" and "Strange Little Girl", offhand.

"Running Up That Hill" is one of the most sensuous, sex-laden songs ever recorded as far as vocals are concerned.

Recently Tori Amos was on doing "Crucify", but she wasn't that interested....

Sensuous yes... not so much sex-laden, the closest Kate gets to dirrtiness is "Hounds Of Love" and she never comes close to Tori on "Leather" or "Raspberry Swirl".

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3367487718&category=2328&rd=1

Six fucking grand!