Maxim Magazine (U.K.) June 1998 Added July 7, 1998

A review of "from the choirgirl hotel" and a short article about Y Kant Tori Read appeared in the June 1998 issue of Maxim Magazine in the U.K. Many thanks to Toriphile Jason C Goodmanson for sending me this (and I am sorry it took me so long to get it posted!)

MAXIM, June 1998 (Rebecca Rominj on the cover)

Music, page 144

TORI AMOS
From the Choirgirl Hotel (Atlantic)

If you're like us, Tori Amos really snuck up on you. At first her plinky-plunky piano, wibbly-wobbly high notes, and lyrics from another galaxy annoyed the hell out of you. But then one night you caught her on Letterman and found yourself transfixed: She gasped, she gulped, she rode her piano bench like it was a stallion. Soon you were buying all her albums and hiding the Tori Unplugged video in your underwear drawer. Well, buck up, bud: There's nothing even slightly shameful about this powerful new album. Almost raucous enough to play on poker night, it blends her hot-shit piano playing with a sandier, guitar-laced edge, slide guitar ("Playboy Mommy"), and thrumming, Ziggy Stardust power chords ("She's Your Cocaine"). Though a few songs evoke the spaced-out Tori of old (sample nut-case lyric: "On the other side of the galaxy/She had a January world"), the sum total is honest, strong, erotic, and - her lingering UFO charm notwithstanding - down-to-earth.

Michael Albo

and, on the following page (page 145)

SOUR NOTES

When Bad Things Happen to Good Rockers

Once, Tori was a tart, Lenny was a twit, and Billy Joel was . . . well, insane. The early career blunders of the loud and famous.

How do you make it as a big, respectable rock star? With talent, drive, and contempt for laughable music trends, right? Fat chance, friend. This rogues' gallery of rockers with cheesy pasts proves that even some great ones have succumbed to fads:

Star: TORI AMOS, ETHEREAL ALT-ROCKER

In Her Previous Life: A pop-metal vixen with huge hair - known simply ass "Tori" - who gave her band the inexplicable name of Y Kant Tori Read. Their only album (1988) featured members of "Weird Al" Yankovich's band. And, scantily clad, Tori cozied up to a motorcycle in the video for the single "The Big Picture."

The Cover Up: In the liner notes for this awful '80s affair, Tori actually thanked an exec for "letting me make the album I wanted to make." Later, she blamed the mess on "corporate pressures." Her label, Atlantic Records - anxious to avoid the question, Y Kant Tori Stop Suing Us? - has wisely decided not to reissue the album.

Here is another choirgirl review from Mike Gray, which is also reportedly from Maxim Magazine, though I am not sure if it appeared on the June 1998 issue or May 1998:

OK, the world says she's so bats you could hang bells off her, but Tori can sure belt out a song and rattle those ivories. On From The..., gone is the dark, just me 'n' my piano intimacy of Boys For Pele. Instead, huge ornamental melodies are lavished over programmed, often trippy, beats and thumping rhythms. It's more grown up, more womanly and, paradoxically, more boring now the naked piano player is dressed in such an orgy of over-production.
Andy Robson

*** out of ***** (3 stars out of 5)

Please give me feedback, comments, or suggestions about my site. Email me (Michael Whitehead) at mikewhy@iglou.com