Tori Amos: Unrepentant Geraldines

tori amos
Tori Amos
Unrepentant Geraldines
(Mercury Classics)
Rating: 3.5 Stars

Videos by American Songwriter

Tori Amos turned 50 last summer, and she’s not sorry.

She’s not sorry for throwing her rage in the street during the 90’s, not sorry for framing her rage with obtuse concepts, and especially not sorry for continuing to ask the same questions about the roles of women in the Bible, in various other mythologies, and in the world at large. Examining how we wrestle with these ideas (or choose not to) is her stock-in-trade.

As Amos has aged, she’s also become less of a loose cannon. She’s not sorry about this either, but some of it has to do with perception, since we’re now an extremely desensitized audience. Nothing shocks like it did twenty years ago. Still, that hasn’t stopped Amos devotees from craving the sort of balls-out histrionics that made her famous to begin with. Ask any longtime Tori Amos fan what they want more than anything from their piano-bench-straddling heroine and most will respond by referencing 1996’s Boys for Pele, a sprawling, bitter-breakup-opus starring Amos, her piano, and an antique harpsichord. The disc reveled in her creative idiosyncrasies and left critics shaking their heads, but fans were selling out halls all over the world, shrieking like it was the Fab Four at Shea Stadium. She followed up with the even darker, industrially-tinged From the Choirgirl Hotel in 1998, which touched on miscarriage, jealousy, and addiction. The lasting impression was one of full disclosure: nothing was off limits between Amos and her audience. What they’ve been demanding from her since 2003’s post-9/11 meditation, Scarlet’s Walk, is a return to that level of unprecedented intimacy. The problem with this, of course, is that Tori Amos has grown up. She no longer feels like she needs to reveal all her secrets. By 2009’s Abnormally Attracted to Sin, Amos sounded (at best) like she was putting up a brave front; her audience reacted like an old friend that’s suspicious you’re keeping important details from them.

The good news about her self-produced 14th release, Unrepentant Geraldines, out this week, is that a compromise has been struck. After embarking on a handful of musical departures, Amos returns to us with a collection of accessible pop songs that play right into her unapologetic stance. Perhaps the most refreshing thing about the new set is its lack of pretense – although there are themes that loosely tie the project together, there’s no many-tentacled agenda being sold to us alongside. What’s more, though she says the collection makes no attempt to shock, Amos is writing in a plain-stated way that’s plenty startling in its own right. “I hate you / I hate you, I do / I hate that I turn into a kind / some kind of monster / with just, just a flick of your finger / it is that easy,” she coos in “Wild Way,” which, paired back-to-back with the Celtic-flavored “Wedding Day,” paints a portrait of ageing love which refuses to sugarcoat the depressing realization that your partner isn’t who you’d originally hoped. Once the initial surprise wears off, a nervous vulnerability comes into focus: Amos has removed the mask. Whether longtime fans will appreciate this is another matter entirely, since they seem to prefer when she writes in far-flung, coded messages. We’re now miles away from something like 1996’s “Mohammed, My Friend,” with the memorably hard-to-decipher declaration, “…And if I lose my Cracker Jacks at the tidal wave / I’ve got a place in the Pope’s rubber robe.”

More often than not, Unrepentant Geraldines works well to showcase Amos’s penchant for gorgeous pockets of melody. It’s what you might call ‘Tori-light,’ not unlike 2005’s undervalued The Beekeeper, with voice and signature Bosendorfer piano at the forefront. Flourishes of guitar, organ, and, in one instance, tuba, fill in the sides. The opener, “America” personifies ‘The Other America’ – presumably a non-Anglo, more socially aware populous – as an individual confused by our collective apathy, but who’ll stick around to help us out if we ever get our shit together. The song is hopeful, and Amos’s lushly layered vocals are cushioned on a floating bed of light percussion and keyboard pleasantries. The galloping lead single, “Trouble’s Lament,” depicts a woman fleeing from Satan’s grasp against a vaguely Southern Gothic backdrop. Easily the set’s prettiest offering, “Oysters,” revisits the chord progression from the Amos classic “Marianne” whilst the protagonist sings about searching to reclaim a lost sense of self. “Promise” features the return of Amos’s 13-year-old daughter, Natashya Hawley, who first appeared on the classical project, Night of Hunters, in 2011. Another disarmingly plain-faced track, “Promise” is cobbled together in a call-and-response pattern with mother and daughter finishing one another’s sentences and occasionally misunderstanding each other: art imitates life. If the sentiment is a tad hokey, Hawley makes up for it with her endearingly melismatic, breathy warble, a contextual surprise in a Tori Amos tune.

Some of the new songs have apparently been inspired by visual works of art. Paul Cezanne’s use of color informs “16 Shades of Blue,” which is a prime candidate for remixing. Amos presents herself as a character scrambling to defend herself in a series of infuriating arguments, set against some of the disc’s only programmed beats, though the track would benefit greatly from a heavier bottom-end. Dante Rosetti’s The Maids of Elfen-Mere is the catalyst for the gauzy, fairytale track of the same name, while the suite-like title song contrasts the regretful-seeming central figure in Daniel Maclise’s etching of Geraldine with Amos’s ongoing righteous defense of unbridled female sexuality.

In the end, Unrepentant Geraldines goes far to re-establish the sense of intimacy that won Amos her audience’s unwavering devotion; there’s a level of honesty characterizing the project that should jibe well with them, and she’s in confident voice throughout without ever sounding canned or over-calculated. The disc might even win her some new listeners since it doesn’t require any homework to be fully enjoyed, plus there’s more readily available ear candy than she’s served up on any of her post-Beekeeper releases. Tori Amos has finally invited us to sit in on her middle-aged restlessness. Her journey toward liberation from various ensnaring forces is plenty compelling. Just don’t expect her to apologize for shutting us out for a while… even our most extroverted artists require privacy. Without it, there are no surprises, nothing much to look forward to.

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