Desire Avenue

RobB wrote:............and at least half a dozen boring Tori albums. [b)]

Well I wouldn't say half a dozen, but I can see it getting that way!

There's some great 'alternative versions' of the album title floating around on the boards ... my favourite is 'Alarmingly Addicted to Semen'.

blue wrote: my favourite is 'Alarmingly Addicted to Semen'.

How appropriate since Tori's career has been all at sea for some time now.

Her 'career' is doing fine - it's her music she needs to look at. Less focus on her 'career' and more on her art would be very welcome, at this point.

Not gonna happen, though.

I just want to corner her in a room and scream "Less Is MORE!!!!!!!!!!"

Some of the best albums ever made have as little as 9 tracks. Considering her worshipping of Led Zeppelin, she should take note of the amount of tracks some of their albums have (like IV) and appreciate the impact they still have despite this.

And for gods sake woman, enough with the damn concept albums!!!!!! It's getting really really boring!

On a side note, I'm quite into Venus at the moment, Datura is fab!

Datura is awesome.

I find I'm really losing my patience/interest now with Tori's current path ... it's not just a blip, clearly, it's a trend, and I don't like it one little bit. I think the Botox did something to her brain. Everything up to and including Scarlet, wonderful. She hits 40, gets all insecure about her looks, starts having Botox and eyelifts and god knows what else, and her creativity turns to shit. I SEE A LINK.

I think I'm going to give the new album hype a miss this time, quite honestly. It's huge fun when there's a great album at the end of it, but the last two rounds have been all for nought, and I can't be arsed anymore. I'll check out the album whenever it's released, just in case, but I'm not sticking around for the blow-by-blow this time.

Weird,that,isn't it.I can think of two or three musicians whose output has suddenly gone off the bridge.For instance,David Bowie,after a good long run,lost it c.1986 and hasn't got it back again.
Also,I think Bjork has effectively used up her credit.Medulla was scraping the barrel,looks empty now.

It frustrates me that a woman so famous for baring her soul so deeply on her records is now resorting to concept fattened quantity epics in some desperate attempt to look interesting. The saddest part of this is that Tori is fascinating, but no longer seems to want to share herself with her audience, something she seemed to do so genuinely back in the LE days. Maybe it's a midlife crisis that will suddenly shed itself and she will comeback with something awesome and career afirming like Rickie Lee Jones, Joni Mitchell and Suzanne Vega have in recent years. Or she might just end up like the older late Laura Nyro, who's youthful output was absolutely astonishing but her older output was dire over produced songs about mother earth and animal rights. Maybe good intentioned, but saying very little about the woman behind the music other than a conscience.

The last thing I want to see is Tori coming back sadder and flatter with each release, but it is scary when my favourite release by her in the last few years has been a boxset that archives her glory days. The fact that she shed a song as glorious and upbeat as Not David Bowie in favour of the dire contemporary adult pop that littered TBK, speaks volumes. Maybe she should do what Lisa Germano did, take a good 5 years off and come back to see us with a whole new insight into her persona. It worked for Lisa, so maybe it could work for Tori?

i read this and lolled

Ms. Amos will be the headliner of Universal Republic Records Showcase at the Austin club and will sell out during the festival that spans four days.

aermancer wrote:i read this and lolled

Ms. Amos will be the headliner of Universal Republic Records Showcase at the Austin club and will sell out during the festival that spans four days.

Ha yeah, I think she sold out a few years ago.

Apparently she'll be playing songs from the new record, and I know some of the @ regulars will be there with tape machines at the ready, so I'll have a listen to the mp3s when they surface. Not expecting much, though.

d.a.walker wrote:It frustrates me that a woman so famous for baring her soul so deeply on her records is now resorting to concept fattened quantity epics in some desperate attempt to look interesting. The saddest part of this is that Tori is fascinating, but no longer seems to want to share herself with her audience, something she seemed to do so genuinely back in the LE days.

Well this is the heart of the matter, and general feeling amongst those in the know is that the marked change from 'personal' to 'concept' is down to one person - ie Husband. You might remember that when Tori was still with Eric Rosse, she talked very frankly about their relationship in the press - how he helped her to get over being attacked and so on. Apparently when she married Mark, however, he put some sort of sanction on her talking publically about him and their relationship. He also, according to Tori herself, asked her why she kept on making 'cliche victim music', and suggested she start to portray herself as a strong, healthy woman in her music instead. Which was right before .... oh yes, The Beekeeper.

I think there's definitely been a moving away from the personal to the conceptual, and Mark might be one reason, but I also suspect it's largely down to Tori's huge need for approval from the music critics. They always had a tendency to belittle her because her music was directly inspired by her own life - the old 'it's not art, it's just a diary' thing that tends to be levelled at female singer-songwriters, although strangely not at male singer-songwriters who also write about their own experience [l)] - and I think that really stung her. Remember that interview where she flared up at the memory of some journalist asking her how it felt to be marketing her pain? She was fuming. I really think she has a huge need to be considered a great rock icon, to have the kind of respect and admiration she thinks she deserves, and she changed the way she writes because of that. Same with the music - the press didn't 'get it', so she started churning out the kind of straightforward rock/pop she thinks they'll understand. It's all about this need for approval, and that is very sad in a woman as unique and gifted as she is. By changing her work to win this approval, she's pissing all over the very things that made her so wonderful. [b)]

d.a.walker wrote:The fact that she shed a song as glorious and upbeat as Not David Bowie in favour of the dire contemporary adult pop that littered TBK, speaks volumes.

Exactly. Not David Bowie and Garlands were far and away the best things recorded during TBK era, yet one gets shoved on a DVD and not even given a proper CD release, the other has to wait to end up as a bonus track on a box set. I mean, WTF? Not David Bowie is a fantastic old-skool Tori track, angry and brimming with energy, and Garlands is practically Debussy, ffs. Both tracks amply demonstrate the qualities that ACTUALLY make her great, yet she treats them as afterthoughts.

blue wrote: Garlands is practically Debussy

*rushes off to listen*

Maybe you'll be able to tell me what that little descending motif that underpins the track is - I've always thought it was from one of Debussy's piano pieces, but I can't think which one. Maybe it was just 'inspired by', I know old Claude is one of her favourite composers.

blue wrote:

Maybe you'll be able to tell me what that little descending motif that underpins the track is - I've always thought it was from one of Debussy's piano pieces, but I can't think which one.

Maybe you're getting confused with Decoachhy's piano piece?

Huh?

I think RobB is making a joke about bus/coach.Took me a while-(RobB,maybe you need a quick lesson in French pronunciation ).