The Tori Thread

d.a.walker · Post by **d.a.walker** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 11:06 pm

Mother of GOD, for heavens sake Tori stick the b-sides on a bonus disc so it at least gives us a disc of just the good tracks.

I wonder if it will take me 13 months to buy this one, the amount of time it took me to buy the beekeeper....? (and that was only because it was $10 and I felt obligated to buy it out of sympathy!!!)

If commercial acclaim becomes more important than critical acclaim, and you please the masses rather than the fans, isn't that just a litttttle bit hollow?

I've not listened to the tracks yet, I heard bits of the beekeeper before it was released and was disgusted at the time. I've been worried about getting burnt again by 'leaks', but maybe I should so I don't fork out a needless $30 on more faux tori!!

Maybe I've moved on, or maybe tori has, but another mediocre epic will not improve her tarnishing reputation regardless of sales.

As for the photo, it's a predictable mish mash of her former glories, where has her innovation gone?????????

aermancer · Post by **aermancer** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 11:16 pm

Well the mishmash of Tori of old is more interesting than her Saab (or anything form the Beekeeper anyway :/ )

d.a.walker · Post by **d.a.walker** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 11:30 pm

Unfortunately though I think that the mish mash of old only extends to the artwork

blue · Post by **blue** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 1:16 am

The track list has been causing mayhem over on MTF all day, by the looks of it. No-one is sure if it's real - the webmaster of the Polish fan site that posted it has taken it down once and said it was fake, then put it back up again. A poster on MTF who is pals with Matt Chamberlain and has provided reliable pre-release info before has said that Matt doesn't recognise most of the songtitles in the list.

I hope to god it isn't real. If this artist has sunk so low in her pursuit of mainstream success as to have recorded tracks called 'Yo George' and 'Fat Slut' I am definitely handing in my fancard.

I fear that when she said 'A Piano' was wrapping up 15 years and that she was 'jumping ship', she meant the exact opposite of what most of us thought. The expectation was that she'd be abandoning any concern for commercial success and doing something that truly stretched her as an artist and us as listeners. But if the clips are anything to go by, I think she meant she was abandoning any thoughts of doing something artistically meaningful and doing a Jewel/Liz Phair instead - selling out with a record geared specifically towards the pop mainstream. If that's the case, it will backfire for her just the way it did for Jewel and Liz Phair, who've both become objects of contempt in the business and with large swathes of their fanbases. Rolling Stone has already made its stance clear, telling readers on its website where to find the clips if they wanted to 'torture themselves.'

I think Art Tori is gone for good, replaced once and for all by Lifestyle Tori.

d.a.walker · Post by **d.a.walker** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 2:49 am

It is terribly depressing to think that Tori is spiralling downwards into MOR land. Jewel's first album was delightful and then she became more predictable and watered down with literally every release afterwards, Liz Phair just coped out big time, I didn't even bother giving anything from her last album a try due to her 2003 album being so rankerous. I would be distraught if Tori headed in their direction.

Oh well at least Bjork, PJ Harvey and Stina all have albums this year that won't be uninspired....

I'm tempted to peek at Big Wheel and Bouncing Off Clouds, but I fear disappointment on the scale of Cars And Guitars (ARGHARGHARGHARGH, for the love of GOD Tori you once wrote wonders like Spark, Icicle and Silent All These Years, turn off the soulless AUTOPILOT!!!!!!!!).

I've been a major Tori fan since I was 15 and this is all getting unbearable to observe let alone hear

blue · Post by **blue** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 3:13 am

Both clips are an improvement on the likes of C+G from the last album, they're both much more energetic and uptempo, but they are mediocre by Tori's old standards, no question. 'Big Wheel' is a countryfied southern rock type thing, and by countryfied I don't mean good country - frankly it reminds me of the kind of thing Shania Twain was foisting on the pop charts a while back.

There are already jokes circulating about the video being shot in a line-dancing class. The lyrics are fairly cringeworthy, she refers to herself as a M.I.L.F.

'Bouncing Off Clouds' makes me think of the kind of sweet dance-pop track you might have heard in a disco in the 80s. Nice melody and her vocals are actually lovely on it, but again, the lyrics are nothing to write home about. It's a bland, inoffensive track and as such it will probably reach people who otherwise wouldn't even think of listening to Tori Amos, which is likely the point.

I've been sitting here listening on headphones to the Clearwater solo-Hammond performance of 'The Beekeeper' and wondering where on earth that Tori disappears to when Lifestyle Tori takes over. Seriously. How many rock artists do you know who could sit at a church-like Hammond organ for ten minutes singing with such quiet passion and drama about meeting Death, and do it so convincingly and movingly? Who the fuck does that? THIS is what makes Tori Amos so unique. Why the hell does she feel she has to pursue mainstream commercial success at any cost to her reputation, when she has something so special to give? I *cannot* understand it.

blue · Post by **blue** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 3:22 am

OK, another new track is now on Promosquad, where the first two clips appeared. You have to go through a lot of palaver to get to the track so I'm going to wait for the mp3s to appear, but the person who posted about it on MTF has described it as 'kind of light and pretty.'

It's listed as 'Secret Spill', so it looks like it could be the 'Secret Spell' from the tracklist overleaf.

blue · Post by **blue** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 11:52 am

Got the mp3. Ugh god, this one is absolutely terrible. Insipid, jingly-jangly pop of the most trite kind - someone on MTF said it sounds like the theme tune to an 80s tv show, and lord, it really does.

It's like the Bangles crossed with YKTR, only nowhere near as interesting as that might be. I can't believe she'd let something this embarrassing out to the public. What's left of her reputation after TBK is going right down the pan if the whole album is like this.

What on earth did she mean when she said this album was 'very challenging' to make? Challenging to her artistic integrity, perhaps? Where is the 'warrior woman' she talked about? Where is the 'confrontation' she mentioned, and how is this album 'political'? I'm starting to think when she said political, she meant in the Epic sense, not the wider sense. I think Epic has her by the balls after the poor sales of The Beekeeper, and she's giving them the tripe they want.

Please god let it be a contract filler. Please. The woman who wrote 'Blood Roses' cannot seriously think this fluff is in any way challenging or confrontational.

blue · Post by **blue** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 12:41 pm

Interesting - there's a theory circulating on MTF that these leaked clips are red herrings, put out to distract the fanbase in an attempt to keep the real album from leaking before release.

God how I would love that to be true. PLEASE let it be true.

*edit*

Not true, unfortunately. The tracklist overleaf has been confirmed by SonyBMG in the Netherlands. [:xx]

I mean .... 'Yo George'?!! 'Fat Slut'?!! The woman has well and truly lost it, big time. I think this is going to be the first Tori album I don't even bother checking out.

I guess the meaning of the promo image is pretty clear, now. It's a caricature of 'old Tori', to let us know that she's really gone for good.

d.a.walker · Post by **d.a.walker** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 11:09 pm

The confirmation of our worst fears is almost unsurprising but still crushing. I'm not buying this album.

aermancer · Post by **aermancer** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 11:17 pm

I think Epic has her by the balls after the poor sales of The Beekeeper, and she's giving them the tripe they want.

Please god let it be a contract filler. Please. The woman who wrote 'Blood Roses' cannot seriously think this fluff is in any way challenging or confrontational.

If a major part of her fanbase is hanging in the balance, i don't think she would risk making another filler album just to fulfill her contract with Epic, but maybe like you said, they aren't letting her put out anything artful, and i hope the latter is true, but do you really think Epic would hold her back after the Beekeeper tanked? (with critics and fans anyway, i dont know how commercially sucessful it was)

aermancer · Post by **aermancer** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 11:18 pm

d.a.walker wrote:The confirmation of our worst fears is almost unsurprising but still crushing. I'm not buying this album.

i'll download it to see how it is, but i won't buy it if it's garbage.

d.a.walker · Post by **d.a.walker** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 11:25 pm

Just listened to big wheel and bouncing off clouds.

Big Wheel is so bad, it's just awful and the lyrics are just garbage. Bouncing off clouds is tori by numbers. It's not looking good.....

blue · Post by **blue** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 12:28 am

Doesn't 'Big Wheel' make you think of Shania Twain? I could see her performing that track. And the 'I'm an M.I.L.F., donchoo fohget' line makes me want to shake her until her nose bleeds.

Dan, if you want to hear the Secret Spell clip just PM me, but it's probably better not to hear it at all. It's like .... you know what it actually reminds me of? 'Happy Day' - that song she recorded as Ellen Amos way back in 1980. It's that bad.

d.a.walker · Post by **d.a.walker** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 12:40 am

You know what is really annoying me about bouncing off clouds, the way she sings clouds on this song, it's such a tori cliche!