I’m Not Sure Who’s Fooling Who Here As I’m Watching Your Decay

The good news: the six new Tori Amos songs that have been leaked prior to the release of Scarlet’s Walk in late October are a very pleasant surprise. They are all solid songs, and quite a lot better than her past few albums, with the exception of “The Glory Of The 80s” and “Suede” from the otherwise dire To Venus And Back. The best of these six songs, “Amber Waves” and “Pancake”, are pretty damn wonderful, as good as her best material. The songs are organic, but she doesn’t compromise her flirtations with electronic keyboards on the past two albums to return to the straight piano formula that suited her much better on her first three albums, which is admirable. There’s a nice balance of old Tori and new Tori, which makes up for the painful awkwardness of Strange Little Girls and To Venus And Back. She sounds confident, selfassured.

The bad news: even the best songs are kind of bland. It’s not hard to imagine bits of these songs, particularly “Taxi Ride”, in a WB promo. There’s a slick, sanitary, safe sound on these songs that lack the quirks, bile, wit, and overall personality of her pre-Choirgirl Hotel albums. The musical difference between Amos’ recent work and her mainstream pop impersonators, most notably Vanessa Carlton, is becoming harder to notice. That’s not entirely fair to Tori – Carlton is so calculated, banal, and hamfisted that I realize that it is more than a little insulting for me to compare Amos’ obviously mature craft to Carlton’s recent schlock-pop hits. Still, I do think to the layperson, the most notable difference between the two is 2002 model Tori’s refusal to go for the bombastic big money choruses that Carlton embraces. Though I think that Amos’ tasteful restraint is greatly preferable, it’s just a bit too much on these songs. I know that this is a woman who has a lot better to offer the world than just pleasant, inoffensive, vaguely cool adult-contemporary background music for vegetarian cafes.

More good news: one of my favorite Barbelith posters, Moriarty, has decided to write a weekly blog about comics and animation called Flat Earth. He’s already got a few entries up, and it’s looking pretty good so far. Check him out.