Soul Drift

First of all I must point out that I am not a hardcore Tori Amos fan. In fact, it’s only been in the last year or so that I’ve actually given her a chance & started listening to her music properly. I heard ‘You Can Bring Your Dog’ & ‘Body & Soul’ a few months ago on a music blog (which has now ceased to be, I’m guessing due to the fact the person was illegally sharing MP3s!), got very excited about her new album & went out to buy it soon after. It’s a good album, but before I start looking at it in-depth, I would advise you to not waste your money on the special edition DVD version. I was expecting a decent DVD with perhaps some interviews or footage of Tori in the studio, when really all you get is 8 minutes of watching her being photographed as her various personalities… not very interesting. The extra track & postcards are not brilliant either. I guess if you are a big fan, it might be something you would like, but it was hugely disappointing for me.

I salute to you Commander
and I sneeze
‘Cause I have Now
an Allergy
To your policies it seems

Where have we gone wrong America?
Mr. Lincoln we can’t seem
to find you anywhere out of the millions
From the deserts
To the mountains
Over prairies
To the shores
Is this just the Madness of King George
Yo George
Is this just the Madness of King George
Yo George
Well you have the whole Nation
on all fours.

Is how American Doll Posse opens, making it clear that it is very much a political record. I guess a lot of American bands/musicians are jumping on the political bandwagon at the moment, but it doesn’t bother me too much. I know a lot of people get annoyed with it (I suppose some of it is annoying, especially when some bands don’t really know what they’re talking about) but I’m all for intelligent attempts at it. Anyway, as her official website says:

American Doll Posse features Tori as five distinct characters – Isabel, Clyde, Santa, Tori & Pip – who combine to make a complete woman. After centuries of being dismembered, literally and figuratively, by the ruling patriarchy the feminine essence has reassembled to take back the power.

I think the album is imaginative, political, feminist, anti-war, sexy & fun all at the same time. I think it does well what she aimed for (according to US Weekly):

What I’m trying to tell other women is they have their own version of the compartmentalised feminine which may have been repressed in each one of them. For many years I have been an image; that isn’t necessarily who I am completely. I have made certain choices and that doesn’t mean that those choices are the whole story. I think these women are showing me that I have not explored honest extensions of the self who are now as real as the redhead.

The only real problem I have with the album is that it is far too long for me. It is just under 79 minutes long & not really something I’d listen to all the way through regularly.

The album is a real mix. It starts off really well, unfortunately begins to lull in the middle (around ‘Girl Disappearing’), but then picks up again quickly for a brilliant ending. My stand-out tracks would be ‘Bouncing off Clouds’ (possibly my favourite of the album), ‘You Can Bring your Dog’, ‘Devils & Gods’ leading into the very sexy ‘Body and Soul’ & the incredibly dark but amazing ‘Code Red’. The second half of the album is also very good, there are some incredible songs such as ‘Beauty of Speed’ (which gives me chills every time), ‘Almost Rosey’, ‘Smokey Joe’ & ‘Dragon’.

I’ll be listening to this album a lot now that I’ve had time to really sit down & listen to it, but will probably pick out the tracks I mentioned above, or at least split it up instead of listening to the whole CD at once. Anyone who stumbles across my Last.FM will know that I’m a big fan of using ’shuffle’ anyway & rarely listen to albums all the way through these days haha.

It’s well worth buying though, just bear in mind what I said about the special edition version if you’re not a Tori fanatic!

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