Desire Avenue

There's an mp3 of 'Fire To Your Plain' going around, just in case any of the - I guess, former Tori fans - want to know. I haven't even bothered to put it up, because it's so awful. Imagine Sade and Sting got together to make a track. Bland, dinner-party smooth jazz-pop-lite-thinks-its-sophisticated-but-is-really-vapid-kak. It honestly didn't occur to me that she could put out something worse than certain Beekeeper/ADP tracks, but this one is a new low. I just don't know what has happened to her over the past five years. *sigh*

My theory? Something very bad happened to Tori in '04. Something that shook her confidence to the core and turned her into a woman who thought Botox and eyelifts were necessary, who wrote song after song referencing infidelity and betrayal, but dressed them up in pretty inoffensive outfits and distancing concepts. Someone covering up something nasty with a lot of nice smooth surfaces.

I so hoped it would all have gone away on this record, like a bad dream. Alas.

My theory (as one of those former fans ) is that Tori's just got too comfortable in her 'comfort zone'.
Same studios,same engineers,same musicians and her music is all getting a little bit predictable and boring.

Thats the healthy part of Stina music,apart from her 'vocal', every album has a different feel owing to the constant change of location and personnel.

Tori needs to get out of that comfort zone and start working with new people.

Yep, I think that's part of it Rob, and it's a popular theory in the Tori community. A bit like with Kate Bush - the first album produced in her home studio with her little team of Del, drummer Stuart Elliott etc was fantastic, but each subsequent album made in the same location with the same team has gotten progressively more stale.

I think her husband has far too much influence over her music, quite frankly. He's gone from being a sound mixer on tour to an engineer on the records, and now a (rotten) guitarist spewing his lame 80s rawk all over her music. Ugh. He's shafting her on every level. Pun intended.

I know you're not a fan of Aerial,Beth but that was actually recorded in a new studio and I think the improvement over The Sensual World & The Red Shoes is pretty noticible

I'm surprised Tori has managed to hang onto such a loyal following really given that she's been reeling out a series mediocre albums for quite a few years now. Nothing since 'To Venus And Back' needed to be released.

I disagree with you Rob. Scarlet's Walk was a wonderful album. I really loved it at the time and it is still one of my all time Tori favourites now (along with Little Earthquakes, Under The Pink, From The Choirgirl Hotel and To Venus And Back).

Funny, I recently listened to Boys For Pele and I really thought that it was the first sign of Tori making too long albums. BFP contains a lot of fillers to be honest! Including the original version of Professional Widow. Damn what a crappy song that is (and I wonder why I never noticed that before). We could have seen the trouble with The Beekeeper and American Doll Posse coming.

Scarlet's Walk is an exception at this. Barely any of the songs fail to capture me. The only song I frequently skip is wampum Prayer.

But The Beekeeper has it's highlights: Jamaica Inn and Goodby Pisces are beautiful. As for American Doll Posse. I listened to it a couple of time, didn't buy the album and can't name a single song from that album.

RobB wrote:I know you're not a fan of Aerial,Beth but that was actually recorded in a new studio and I think the improvement over The Sensual World & The Red Shoes is pretty noticible

Well a new home studio, yes? Still the same 'domestic' environment, with the same nucleus of herself, Del and Stuart Elliott. I find Aerial an even worse record than The Red Shoes. In fact I think I felt exactly the same way about that as I do now about the tracks I've heard from AATS - I didn't think something even worse would follow, but it has.

RobB wrote:I'm surprised Tori has managed to hang onto such a loyal following really given that she's been reeling out a series mediocre albums for quite a few years now. Nothing since 'To Venus And Back' needed to be released.

I think it speaks volumes about the love her fans have for her, and how much her first five albums meant to them, that they've stuck it out through the increasingly ridiculous concepts and mediocre music. But the three tracks so far from this new album have provoked a level of disillusion and contempt that's kind of unprecedented, even for the Tori fanbase in recent years. For the first time I'm seeing diehard fans saying they're probably not going to buy the album itself, just get the couple of decent tracks as mp3s. People seem to be shedding the notion that Tori is somehow going to redeem herself.

A lot of hopes were riding on the fact that she's made a big deal about 'going independent', getting free of the record company pressure she's implied she was under, and yet the mediocrity looks set to infest this new album too. It's become clear that this is just what Tori's music has become - nobody else is to blame, this is how she wants to sound. This is what she thinks is good music, now. People are a bit shell-shocked, I think. The realisation is dawning that Tori has actually lost it, big time.

I might be wrong, but I think this could be something of a watershed. If a significant portion of her fanbase decides not to buy the album, not to go see her live .... well. Who knows where that will leave her, because the mainstream audience she seems obsessed with attaining sure as hell aren't interested.

I disagree that everything after Venus is unnecessary - Scarlet's Walk is a brilliant album, one of her finest pieces of work, and all the more treasured now by a lot of fans in the light of the dross that's come after it. Personally I adore that album and wouldn't be without it.

Strange Little Girls is a great album too, perhaps the last 'dark' album in terms of production and content.

For me the rot started with The Beekeeper, and I maintain that something went very wrong in Tori's life sometime in 2004. That's when this impulse to smooth everything out - whether it be her face or her music - took over. The first symptom of it was evident in Tales of a Librarian, where she looks perfectly Botoxed and airbrushed in the artwork, and has remixed all the life and energy and breaths and flaws out of her old music. Something happened to cause this.

Well, new Tori sucks big time, but thank the gods in heaven, old Tori made an unexpected appearance at a radio station in Austin yesterday:


http://www.sendspace.com/file/h4us29


She didn't play a single new song. Nothing later than Venus. And it is stunning. Absolutely gorgeous performances of COMT, Crucify, SATY, Jackie's Strength and 1000 Oceans.

I think she's been told about the Toripocalypse that's happening in response to the new tracks. I think she's worried people won't go to see the tour. And she's just reminding us that she's still worth hearing live.

Love love love this performance. [love]

Let's face it: Tori made her best songs when she was feeling down or depressed. The first album the rape stood central in the songs. The second and third album was about love that went wrong. The fourth was about her miscarriages. After that, she gotten married and gave birth to her daughter. The music since then has been perfect for the background in the kitchen of a busy household. That is where Tori is right now.

Maybe a bit vicious to say but I bet she'd make a truly inspired album if her daughter got hit by a bus. [b)]

Not content with ripping off Kate muiscally, Tori is now wearing wigs ripping off....erm,whats her name now?

Oh please Rob, don't even try that here.

What makes me laugh about that hoary old chestnut is that Kate Bush is one of the biggest thieves in the history of rock music - she even admitted as much herself, though I believe the word she used was 'magpie'. Practically every song she's written is based on some other artist's original idea, whether it be a book or a movie or a painting or a Pink Floyd album etc, and most of her tunes are stolen from folk music. The only reason she's gotten away with it is because she's nice, and most of the male rock journalists who dictate artists' reputations spent their adolescence masturbating to pictures of her with her tits out.

There's nothing new in music, as I'm sure Dave will tell you, if you haven't realised for yourself.

pgss wrote:Let's face it: Tori made her best songs when she was feeling down or depressed. The first album the rape stood central in the songs. The second and third album was about love that went wrong. The fourth was about her miscarriages. After that, she gotten married and gave birth to her daughter. The music since then has been perfect for the background in the kitchen of a busy household. That is where Tori is right now.

Maybe a bit vicious to say but I bet she'd make a truly inspired album if her daughter got hit by a bus. [b)]

There's been a lot of discussion along these lines the past few days on MTF, and I tend to come down on the side of 'you don't need to be traumatised to make great music'. The example I've used is Scarlet's Walk - a beautiful, emotional, powerful record that has nothing at all to do with her personal life, and was written during a very happy time in her life. She CAN make great music when she steps outside herself and acts as a storyteller, she did it wonderfully on Scarlet.

She's just gone very, very astray in the past five years, she seems to have lost herself completely as an artist, and I think that has much to do with her insecurities about getting older, her need to achieve some sort of mainstream approval/acclaim in the rock world, and her weirdo husband muscling in on her creative process. I think she's been in a very sad place the last few years, and instead of facing it and dealing with it by herself musically, she's trying to smooth it all out and act as if nothing's wrong. Which, let's face it, is something we all do at times.

Poor T. I do actually feel very sorry for her at this point.

blue wrote: pictures of her with her tits out.

Hmmm,now where can these pictures be found???

blue wrote:There's nothing new in music, as I'm sure Dave will tell you, if you haven't realised for yourself.

Absolutely,at least not in the sense of the materials at anyone's disposal.As Prokofiev said in another context 'there are still plenty of beautiful tunes to be written in C major'.
Kate Bush is in good company.For instance,another famous Russian,Stravinsky,was an incredible musical magpie,and was quite upfront about it,which is fine.

sound world wrote:

blue wrote: pictures of her with her tits out.

Hmmm,now where can these pictures be found???

Thirty years ago plastered on the back of London buses I believe.

blue wrote:There's nothing new in music, as I'm sure Dave will tell you, if you haven't realised for yourself.

sound world wrote:Kate Bush is in good company.For instance,another famous Russian,Stravinsky,was an incredible musical magpie,and was quite upfront about it,which is fine.

I didn't know Kate Bush was Russian?

blue wrote:What makes me laugh about that hoary old chestnut is that Kate Bush is one of the biggest thieves in the history of rock music - she even admitted as much herself, though I believe the word she used was 'magpie'. Practically every song she's written is based on some other artist's original idea, whether it be a book or a movie or a painting or a Pink Floyd album etc, and most of her tunes are stolen from folk music.

Its true that Kate has been inspired lyrically by other works,but the melodies are her own,even when covering trad songs like My Lagan Love & The Handsome Cabin Boy. When she does use another composers melody then its credited as such.

sound world wrote:

blue wrote: pictures of her with her tits out.

Hmmm,now where can these pictures be found???

blue wrote:

Oh, just about every picture of her from the first five years of her career, and most of the early videos. Until she decided she was 'established' enough and wanted to be a 'serious artist'.

Seriously, it makes me giggle, this idea that Kate Bush is some paragon of virtue whose every motivation has always been pure as the driven snow. She blatantly used her body at every opportunity to sell herself and her music in the early years, but because she simpers and pretends to be modest and says 'oops well, I didn't REALISE I was being sexy, you know', her integrity is never questioned. Ugh. I've always disliked that aspect of her, even when I was young and loved the music. Give me Madonna anyday - a woman who also blatantly used her body to sell herself and her music, but who OWNED her sexuality and never tried to deny it or hide behind the 'oops I didn't realise, I'm really so innocent' crap.