Desire Avenue

What kills me is that even though it's a naff breakfast cereal commercial - my god, the 80s shoulder pads!! - and a couple of years before YKTR, she's already doing the Tori moves! [love] [akiss]

Tori's new album, 'American Doll Posse', will be released on 1st May. Confirmed by Rolling Stone, though we're still waiting for the press release.

http://undented.com/news/249/american-doll-posse


Oh my. I am LOVING that photo. It's hilarious, on so many levels. [love]

Creepy...
Looks a bit like my Mum's old house in Cornwall in the background....hmm doesn't Tori hang out in Cornwall?
Definitely Cornish stone anyway...(useless information for Tori acolytes)

It does look like an English house, yes. But we'll see when the artwork info arrives.

I love the multiple interps that picture suggests - Tori taking the piss out of her own image, out of her fanbase's expectations, all the complaints over the past couple of years about how mellow and convoluted her public demeanour has been. At the same time, it's very confrontational given the current climate in America where the Christian right wing has been gaining frightening degrees of political clout. Someone on MTF suggested that the blood running down her leg could be a comment on the way the right to abortion is being attacked and eroded by Christian politicians in the US right now. If this image isn't straightforward self-parody, then it looks as if the mellow soccer mom is coming out guns blazing this time.

Which is what she's best at, quite honestly. She produces her best work when she's angry and ready to battle.

Hmmm, I'm not particularly convinced by the photo. It's in all honesty a dreadful photograph. If you look at the photo closely, it's a merger of themes she has written about extensively in the past. Think Strange Little Girls, Crucify, God, Spark, A Sorta Fairytale. Could it be she is instead showing us the Tori of old and suggesting that a new Tori (that she has hinted about for a while now) could be about to emerge? I think a reinvention is coming...

d.a.walker wrote: Could it be she is instead showing us the Tori of old and suggesting that a new Tori (that she has hinted about for a while now) could be about to emerge? I think a reinvention is coming...

Yep, another possible interp, and a fascinating one.

Clips of two new Tori tracks have found their way online - 'Big Wheel' and 'Bouncing Off Clouds'. I've only just got them, but on initial impressions .... not the huge departure that seemed to be suggested by the promo image and some of Tori's comments recently. Fairly straight ahead rock music, uptempo, definitely more energetic than TBK but coming from a similar standpoint production-wise. I think she's again going all out for a mainstream hit, with this album.

I'm so disappointed with the direction, but I actually like both clips a lot. If this turns out to be just a good, uptempo rock record I'll be satisfied with that, but I'm losing hope that she's ever going to return to a more artistically interesting way of working. I don't think she actually cares about that anymore.

the promo image was pretty misleading if you ask me.

although i do enjoy the clips (MUCH MUCH better than Beekeeper), they are basically setting in stone the fact that she will never make another record as good as Venus, Choirgirl, Pele, Pink, or Earthquakes again.

although i could be wrong, the tracks sort of do seem to have a lightweight Venus-era style.

aermancer wrote:the promo image was pretty misleading if you ask me.

although i do enjoy the clips (MUCH MUCH better than Beekeeper), they are basically setting in stone the fact that she will never make another record as good as Venus, Choirgirl, Pele, Pink, or Earthquakes again.

I have to agree, sadly. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to recognise the Tori I loved. If she seriously thinks stuff like BW and BOC is 'a step away from the traditional songwriting' of the last two albums, she has totally lost her capacity to guage what she's doing. These tracks are fine for what they are, but what they are is bog-standard conventional rock music of the safest hue.

The promo image and the comments are looking more and more like an entirely cynical ploy to gain attention from the mainstream media. She is beginning to come across as being obsessed with gaining a huge mainstream hit to satisfy some egoistic craving for mass approval.

Oh Tori, Tori. 'You were wild .... where are you now?'

blue wrote:She is beginning to come across as being obsessed with gaining a huge mainstream hit to satisfy some egoistic craving for mass approval.

.......and there was I thinking that, judging by the huge amount of product that Tori churns out, she was only in it for the money.

For the first time, Rob, I'm starting to think you have a point about that. I think the $500 bottles of wine, the personal chef, the room in her house devoted to the Manolo Blahniks and the Jimmy Choos, the designer clothes etc may have some bearing on the matter.

Oh god. I feel like I'm losing one of my best friends.

*sobs*

If you want musicians who are in it for artistic integrity,you have to look at a) jazz and b) classical music on the whole,I find.Money is a welcome bonus,but not the main issue.
How popular does someone want to be? Tori has a huge fanbase by most standards.

Tori has a very devoted fanbase that she's built up mainly from years and years of playing live - don't get me wrong, the woman works very, very hard for what she's got, nothing wrong with that. She puts herself through a lot with the huge tours. But record-wise, her profile with the public probably peaked around the Pele/Choirgirl period, which is ten years ago now. Her albums sell steadily over long periods of time, so she has longevity in that sense, but she's never been a huge mainstream star, and I'm seriously beginning to think that's what she wants now. She's basically a cult artist with a higher profile than most cult artists, and once upon a time she seemed quite happy with that. But something's changed. The Beekeeper struck almost everyone as a fairly blatant attempt to make her music as 'easy' as possible for a wide audience, but it didn't work because it just wasn't very good - and it's not what she's best at. I really thought from some of the things she's been saying recently that she'd come to her senses, but to respond to the failure of TBK with another album that looks as if it's going to be easy pop/rock only this time more uptempo ..... well. It's clear what's most important to her, I think. Her artistic integrity has gone out the window. She wants a huge hit.

Ugh. Ugh. UGH. I just can't believe she's become so superficial.

Oh well. I hope she enjoys the big hit if it happens. Her reputation within the music industry will sink to nothing, and she'll lose a lot of her old fanbase for good, I suspect, but hey - as long as she can tell herself she's a big star.

I think I'm done, truly. I can't watch this.

have any of you seen the supposedly confirmed tracklisting yet?

American Doll Posse
1 Yo George
2 Big Wheel
3 Bouncing off Clouds
4 Teenage Hustling
5 Digital Ghost
6 You Can Bring Your Dog
7 Mr. Bad Man
8 Fat Slut
9 Girl Disappearing
10 Secret Spell
11 Devils and Gods
12 Body and Soul
13 Father's Son
14 Programmable Soda
15 Code Red
16 Roosterspur Bridge
17 Beauty of Speed
18 Almost Rosey
19 Velvet Revolution
20 Dark Side of the Sun
21 Posse Bonus
22 Smokey Joe
23 Dragon


Goodbye subtlety, and goodbye quality control!

I assume its going to be a double album?