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Thanks to Peter
Zimmerman for this review of Scarlet's Walk. It
was posted to CDNOW.com
in October 2002.
With her
latest release, Scarlet's Walk, Tori Amos has produced perhaps the
first post-9/11 album to question America rather than reaffirm our
faith in it. The album, which Amos conceived while touring America
right after "the Twins fell," as she puts it, follows the
titular character, Scarlet, on a cross-country trip of her own. The
farther she progresses on her journey, the more Scarlet comes to
reexamine her beliefs, particularly about the motives that drive
individual people -- as well as the very country these people live
in.
It's a bold move to
write such an album in these possibly pre-war days, when the right to
question our nation is seemingly not something we can take for
granted. All of which makes Amos' decision to flesh out her music
that much more unfortunate. The strength of her earlier material came
from the nakedness of her music -- just her voice and her piano. Now
that piano is often lost beneath guitars and drums, or simply traded
for a wimpy keyboard.
Consequently, her
message, so powerful when unadorned, tends to get diluted by the
awkward arrangements that accompany it. Lyrically and thematically,
Amos still stands as a brave and unique voice. Musically, she now
sounds like all the other female songwriters she once so easily
surpassed.
Nina Pearlman
CDNOW Contributing Writer
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