The Daily Telegraph newspaper in the U.K. included a review of Tales Of A Librarian in their December 20, 2003 edition.

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Thanks to Lucy and Woj for making me aware of it. You can read it online at www.telegraph.co.uk or below:


Tori Amos
Tales of a Librarian, Atlantic, £13.99

It's a "best-of" collection from her Atlantic years, with four new songs chucked in. This being Tori Amos, it's arranged not chronologically, but according to an overarching theme: the library. Thus, the heartbreaking Playboy Mommy comes under Medicine and Health: Miscarriage, Professional Widow under Animals: Spiders, and Me and a Gun comes under Social Problems and Social Services: Rape. It sounds iffy, but actually it's quite a neat way of placing some fantastic songs into a sharper focus. There'll be a few complaints about the ones that got away (Wot? No 1,000 Oceans?), but for the most part, it's all here in its turbulent glory. The new stuff is OK, but follows the pattern of Amos's recent material in that she seems to have lost a bit of her restless squirming spirit.

There's also a DVD with five "live" songs, which is barely worth bothering with, having been recorded during the soundcheck at some outdoor concert. The performances are perfunctory, the sound is dull, and the cameras appear to have been operated with remote control joysticks by someone wearing a blindfold.

David Cheal