Read the review and see the photos.

TORI AMOS (8 out of 10)
To Venus and Back. (East West)

THIS TWO-CD set was originally intended to be highlights of her 1998 tour but Amos found she had enough fresh songs to record a new album. After 1998's harrowing From the Choirgirl Hotel, To Venus and Back is relatively playful: Riot Poof is homophobe teasing while Glory of the '80s affectionately looks back at a decade Amos spent in L.A. in search of gigs. These songs are increasingly studio-engineered but not gratuitously so. On Lust, for instance, her vocals peel into two, reflecting the duality of the lyrics. Meanwhile, Amos the tragedian cannot be denied: Juarez, prompted by a story of a mass rape in a desert, features a Wings of Desire-style babble of anguished voices. Only, as Amos intones, "no angels came". Multi-layered yet stark, this is Amos at her best.

Tori Amos
To Venus and Back
Atlantic 7567-83242-2 (2 CDs), 18.49 pounds

Strange how if you're a male singer-songwriter with lyrics on the weird side you're a true troubadour pushing the evelope of rock poetry, whereas if you're female- Kate Bush springs to mind -you're just daffy. Girls, eh? Tori Amos has filled the gap vacated by Bush, and , while her lyrics are undoubtedly weird ("Father, I killed my monkey/I let it out to taste the sweet of spring"), to dismiss them as merely the ramblings of a colourful imagination is to misread Amos's alchemic strivings: words and music both sift the flotsam on the wilder shores, and add up to an extravagant gothic construct that delves deep into the more secretive recesses of human nature. To Venus and Back brings all of Amos's quirks to the fore, and is as marvellous and quixotic as last year's From the Choirgirl Hotel. Bliss, Concertina and Glory of the 80's are tours de force, while an accompanying live album cherrypicks a strong back catalogue. Amazing what these daffy chicks can do.

David Cairns

Tori Amos
To Venus And Back (Atlantic)

"FATHER - I killed my monkey; I let it out to taste the sweet of spring," sings Tori Amos against a turbulent cauldron of sound on the opening track of her latest CD. Yes indeed: we are back in familiar territory, barely a year and a half since her last album, the magnificent From The Choirgirl Hotel.

This year's journey into Amos's strange and disturbing world is via a double album: a studio CD of new material, and a live disc. All the landmarks are there: sinister percussion loops, multi-layered vocals, clattering drum patterns, and some exquisite chord changes. In fact, the live album captures some of the shimmering power of last year's world tour, her first with a proper band (although some of the songs go on a bit), but the new stuff is what Amosophiles will be buying it for.

So is it any good? Yes: it's just as stunning as its predecessor - manic, percussive, passionate, weird, thrilling. With a whole arsenal of uninhibited whoops, shrieks and ululations at her disposal, Amos makes most other contemporary vocalists sound like Smurfs. Her piano playing, meanwhile, is complex, imaginative, unpredictable. As for that poor monkey, it's just a taste of the lyrical strangeness to come on an album that marks the continuation of an extraordinary period of creative flowering for Tori Amos.

A review of "to venus and back" was in the September 17, 1999 edition of The Daily Mail in the U.K./Scotland. Thanks to James Chapman for sending this to me.

(four out of five stars)

TORI AMOS: To Venus And Back (Atlantic) AMOS builds on the beguiling melodies and mature lyrics of last year's From The Choirgirl Hotel with this excellent double CD, a studio album plus a live disc of favourites, including Cornflake Girl. With more than two hours of music, this is unlikely to win her many new fans, but her swooping voice has never sounded better than on the studio songs here. Her band plays well on Juarez and Bliss, but the best numbers are the swirling piano ballads, including Concertina, Josephine and the superb 1,000 Oceans.

Reviewed by Adrian Thrills.

Read more about the chat and a complete transcript.

TORI ADORE

Not the greatest Tori ever sold, but Amos is still better than most

"Silent all these Years," Tori Amos' first single and one of the key songs of the '90s, was all about a woman finding her voice. But in the studios half of the two-CD To Venus and Back, Amos spends a good amount of time throwing that voice. Forsaking her up-front chops and brash lyricism, this disc is more Tori in an Ambient Mood, with electronic effects on a half-dozen cuts that sound like they could've been produced by old pal Trent Reznor. There are straight pop songs, too -- "1,000 Oceans" is her most traditional ballad since Little Earthquakes' "Winter"-- but mainly, a sense that she's hiding beneath percussive soundscapes. Good luck deciphering what she's saying, but it's the most enjoyable listen she's generated in years; maybe reclaiming some feminine mystique is an equally valid form of empowerment. If you prefer the older, more provocative (or at least loudly cryptic) Amos, there's Venus' second disc, a fell live album, complete with confrontive concert standards like "Precious Things" and "Waitress." Amid expanded full-band arrangements, you can revisit the bold breathiness that made it possible for future cornflake girls like Paula Cole to come along and hyperventilate on record and try not to hold that against her. EW's rating of To Venus and Back: B

Chris William

Entertainment Weekly also has a shorter review of the album that has appeared elsewhere (I think in a special Fall 1999 Greatest Moments in Movies issue) that you see below:

On this double CD (a new studio album, plus live tracks), Amos orbits her usual spacey terrain of piano-piled musings, dark beats, and celestial textures. "Juarez"-where cowboys and Indians rub elbows with Rastafarians on a fantastical frontier-is the type of fairy-tale fodder that makes one want to scream "Earth to Tori!" But Amos' songs remain as majestic as they are mysterious. (B)

TORI AMOS - to venus and back
What was originally conceived as a B-sides record became a double CD -- featuring a live disk and a new studio album -- after Amos hit one of her visionary writing spells. "These songs need to live in their own world as a sound, as a shape," she says of the tracks, which swerve from the earthy to ethereal. As for the live disk? "I wanted a live record out before I need to have oxygen by the side of the stage." (Sept. 21)

Read more about the chat and a complete transcript.

Read the review.

There was a small article about Tori at Spin.com in the Noise Section on September 3, 1999. Thanks to Beth Winegarner, Rynn Fox, Sarah A. Skrobis and Amanda Cavataio for sending this:

Tori: To Amos and Back

Chanteuse extraordinaire Tori Amos spoke to Spin.com recently about the evolution of her latest album, to venus and back (due in stores September 21). "We knew we were going to make a live album, but we weren't sure what the second disc was going to be. The idea was B-sides and a few extra tracks, and then the few extra tracks became this new little world. So when I played it for the engineers they said to me that they didn't think that the new songs would be heard in the right way...a B-side album has to be random, because they come from different periods of time." Fans (or "ears with feet," as they prefer to be called), shouldn't wait breathlessly for the proposed B-side disc, as Amos now feels she would rather release the tracks as an entire collection, which are "probably three or four CDs worth." Says the red-headed queen of all things ethereal, "There's a lot of stuff over the years that people can't get, and people started asking me, well, 'which B-sides are you putting on, and if you don't put on this one then I'm going to be really upset,' you're just going 'oh my god,' I'm not ready for that yet." As for the Toriphiles concerned about future works, there is no need to worry, since Tori is always on the prowl for new inspiration- "I try to be a good hunting dog, and just track."

Read the review.

I just got Record Collector magazine today, September issue, and there is some Tori content on the 'Information Station' page, which features new promos etc. It says this-

"Lawks-a-lordy! There's plenty to get your teeth into this month, not least of which is the new Tori Amos album sampler. Featuring six new tracks ("Bliss", "Juarez", "Concertina", "Glory Of The 80's", "Suede", and "1,000 Oceans"), this pre-master CD-R will set you back at least 150 pounds. Don't be fooled by the illustration- ours has been caringly signed, whereas most copies won't be".

There's then a picture of the promo. The cover is a picture of Martian Studios and it lists Tori as the producer and Mark and Marcel as the engineers.'Martian Engineeing' is printed in big letters across the side. The date printed on there is July 1st 1999 and it's also signed by Tori to the guy who wrote the article.

Anyway, the promo is number one in the chart for this month's most expensive promos at 150 pounds!

Tori Amos
to venus and back

Less histrionic and more atmospheric than her earlier work, to venus and back finds the singer-songwriter playing with a whole bag of new tricks. She's got inverted jungle beats that buzz and rattle, sound effects that sift into songs as though from far away, drumming that recalls the stomp of John Bonham, and bubbling synthesizers that percolate like a witch's brew. With experimental production details, textured rhythms, and a seemingly infinite melodic range, Amos trips expansively from the mournful to the celebratory on this wonderful, moody, and mildly psychedelic outing. Bonus: For listeners who still want to hear her sing a piano ballad, there's an accompanying CD with live performances of her earlier material.
- Dimitri Ehrlich

Kelly Stitzel and Robyn report that there were 2 Tori sightings in the September 1999 issue of Jane Magazine. On page 106, there is a mention of a nail polish with proceeds going to RAINN. It says, "Pretty nails, worthy cause: Fifty percent of Tony and Tina's Colors of Hope proceeds go to RAINN, the 24-hour violent-abuse support network started by Tori Amos (800-656-HOPE)." If you'd like to purchase the Tony and Tina nail polish, you can check out their website at www.tonyandtina.com or you can go to www.eve.com and buy from there.

Then, on page 108, there's a little picture of Tori next to the picture of someone named Jocelyn. The question on the street is "Which celebrity do people say you resemble?" Jocelyn says, "People say Tori Amos, but I don't. That bugs the crap out of me." Both Kelly and Robyn say that this woman does not look like Tori at all. It would appear from her comments that she is not much of a fan either.

TORI AMOS

Album Title: TO VENUS AND BACK

Release Date: Sept. 21

What Can We Expect?
Although her characteristic orchestral sweeps and swooning voice are firmly in place, Tori's feeling a bit more jaunty this time around. Of the 2-disc, 12 songs will be live - not a Greatest Hits, per se, but more like a Greatest Performances From The Last Tour - and 12 will be new, with titles such as "Glory Of The '80s" and "Lust". As for the album title, Tori says she came up with the name while chatting with her friends over a bottle of wine. "One of the women said to me 'If you could, would you go to Mars?' I said, 'Jesus Christ, not me and Mars. That's all too male for me'. And the other woman, 'You'd go to Venus wouldn't you.' And I just looked and said 'That's it! To Venus and back!'" At presstime, however, Amos was still working on song choices, mixes, and even titles (the live record may be called one thing; the new songs another), but trust us on this one: a happy Tori still provides plenty of food (and sound) for thought.

The September 1999 issue of Spin Magazine includes a section on "The 90 Greatest Albums of the '90s", and "Little Earthquakes" was placed at #31. The cover of this issue is a collage of Trent Reznor, Kurt Cobain, Lauren Hill and Beck. The cover says the issue features exclusive interviews with Rage Against the Machine, Beck, Tori Amos, Eddie Vedder, Prodigy, Dr. Dre, PJ Harvey and more, though as you will see the interview with Tori is really small. There is a small article on Tori on page 134 where Little Earthquakes is listed at #31 and it includes a photo of Tori (one report says it is from 1992) with the caption "Cornflake Girl: Tori Amos." (*sigh*) Thanks to Pixie, Karla Canales, Kim Hatton and Iliana for telling me about this. You can read the article below. Kristy has sent me the photo and you can see it along with the article!

#31 Tori Amos
Little Earthquakes (ATLANTIC, 1992)

Little Earthquakes was half-debut, half-retreat from the big rock trip/tragedy of Y Kant Tori Read. So it came to pass that preacher's daughter Tori Amos packed up her piano, her Sylvia Plath books, and her renegade theology and headed off toward a labyrinth of dreams and memory, of fury, sex, and guilt-driven psychodramas. She almost ended up nowhere instead. "When I brought the album to the label, it was rejected," Amos says. "Nobody really cared what I was up to." Amos agreed to write four new songs, as long as she didn't have to sell her soul to the big-guitar sound then annexing the universe.

It turned out that the holy soul jelly roll had been there all along - not just in the emotionally loaded dice of rape narrative "Me and A Gun," but also in the dense, mercurial melodies of "Crucify" and the unadorned piano of "Silent All These Years." No one else this side of Prince during his golden era had climbed so far down into sex and so far up into heaven at the same time. The final version of the album, with its expressionist clothes and naked feeling, offered an alternative to the alternative scene's boys'n'guitars monopoly. And it quickly inspired the most obsessive following in the biz, turning the Web into a global Torifest. "A lot of her fans are really shy and different, and they feel safe on the Internet," says Schuyler McGraw, who interned at the Amos-sponsored Rape Abuse and Incest National Network. Such a far-flung fandom replicates Little Earthquakes itself, a recording about fragmentation and the struggle not to come apart entirely. Or as Amos puts it, "I make music from the divisions inside myself."

(See also: piano woman Fiona Apple's Tidal, which is similarly obsessed with sex and psychosis.)

by Joshua Clover