|
|  |
Thanks to Zach for
this album review, which can also be found on ocregister.com.
Amos
wanders past the 9/11 blast
By BEN WENER
The Orange County Register
Tori Amos,
"Scarlet's Walk" (Epic) - It's a fascinating, audacious
outing, that's for sure: 18 songs - character sketches, personal
reflections, social commentary - mirroring an inexplicably
labyrinthine cross-country trek the flighty singer-songwriter
undertook in the wake of Sept. 11.
What was she
searching for? When it comes to Tori, who could say with any
authority? Hazard a guess: Maybe the real America that television
rarely shows? Proof that we're not as single-mindedly driven by
revenge as we let on? Both are way too obvious and concrete for a
woman who talks to angels.
The liner notes include a routing map to help guide you through
the psychological foliage, and you'll need it, though it's doubtful
even intrepid explorers will feel they're ever on solid ground during
this epic beauty. It seems deliberately hard to follow, the languid,
sophisticated musical approach blurring one song into the next (only
the jaunty "Wednesday" breaks the mood), the enticing but
maddeningly elliptical lyrics so abstract and off-metered you can
barely pick out her punchlines.
Ultimately it's
difficult to know which members of her cast she's addressing
directly, which she's merely recalling to provoke thought and which
she's fully embodying, for sometimes she manages to do all three in
the same song. And maybe that's the point - that the faded porn star
("Amber Waves") and the American Indian forebears
("Crazy," I think, and definitely "Pancake") and
the scarred lovers (they litter the landscape) and irreligious
figures like "Mrs. Jesus," they all inhabit the same
relatively small space you and I call home. And none of them seems
terribly concerned with global terror. They have lives to lead, souls
to tend to.
For as inviting as it
is, "Scarlet's Walk" isn't an easy journey to endure, and
like most road trips, it doesn't get really exciting until the car
breaks down and the tension inside spills onto the highway. Once it
does - starting with the seething "Don't Make Me Come to
Vegas," on through the gorgeous "Your Cloud" (one of
her saddest, most succinct works) and past the self- explanatory
"I Can't See New York" - that's when it becomes a
mesmerizing ride. Forget the Kate Bush comparisons that forever
plague her; this is the closest she's ever come to a great Joni
Mitchell album. (Amos plays Dec. 17 at Universal Amphitheatre.)
Grade: B+ (Ben Wener/The Register)
|
