Maybe One Day She'll Be Her Own

In response to the performances and setlists from the Australian tour so far, Toriphile Melanie has created a petition to show the demand for solo tours of North America and Europe and to encourage Tori to supply the same. Melanie is planning on getting a list of the signatures to Tori at either the end of the Australian tour or at the upcoming Jazz Cafe show so if you agree with the sentiment, we’re sure that she’d appreciate you adding your name to the petition.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow in Sydney

Due to the limited cell phone reception, we didn’t expect to be able to get the setlist for today’s or tomorrow’s shows at the Sydney Opera House live as it happened. However, we did expect to get the set posted once it came in but nefarious things precluded us from doing so as quickly as the intrepid @sarahkthx sent it in just after the show ended. Nevertheless, it is there now — go forth and feast your eyes upon its glory!

In addition to the new staples (“Lady in Blue,” “Blood Roses,” “I Can’t See New York” and “Barons of Suburbia”), the set was sprinkled with several other favorites including “Here. In My Head,” “Pandora’s Aquarium,” “Take to the Sky,” “Merman” and “Putting the Damage On.”

We’re sure everyone knows the routine by now but just in case not: we’d love to host your reviews, photographs and videos on the site. If you’d like to share, please use the comment form at the bottom of the Sydney page to let us know. There are instructions for e-mail photographs as well.

Hopefully we’ll be able to get the second Sydney’s setlist posted sooner than today’s. Wish us luck! (But if we don’t, y’all can start posting reviews for that show in the Tour section soon as the show is over.)

Bouncing Off Canberra

The Australian Sinful Attraction tour stopped in Canberra today and, thanks to @Almond87 on Twitter, the setlist is up! The concert featured “Bouncing off Clouds,” “Toast,” “Father Lucifer,” “Upside Down,” and covers of “Boys in the Trees” and “I’m On Fire.” Check out the rest of the set in the Tour section.

If you were there and care to share your thoughts on the performance, pleasse do so using the comment form at the bottom of the Canberra page.

York Vision Midwinter Graces Review

Tori Amos: Midwinter Graces

By Laura Cress

So the deal is this. Tori Amos, a woman who could be described as having slipped off the ship deck of sanity for a short spell in the sea of stupidity in her last album Abnormally Attracted to Sin, has now decided to release a “seasonal album.” This contains re-workings of traditional Christmas carols such as “Star of Wonder” as well as some Amos originals for good measure.

It was therefore with a little bit less than baited breath that I listened to the first song, What Child, Nowell, but amazingly I wasn’t forced to bang my laptop repeatedly shut over my head just to drown out the noise. The only part I found strange was the chorus where Tori sings the famous lines ‘Nowell’. because, Because this is a re-working, the rhythm has been completely changed – that second Noel is now hanging on for forever and a day, leaving the other poor Noels out in the dark.

And that seems to be the main problem with this collection. Whilst it’s nice to see somebody rework tired songs and make them interesting again, everybody has been programmed since about the beginning of every September to listen to Christmas songs being blasted out at us. Therefore they’ve become such a tradition that changing the rhythms but leaving the main lyrics as the same just seems a bit unnatural.

Nevertheless, there is something very Christmassy about the arrangement of instruments that made me wistful for the winter, so in some dimension this does work as a Christmas album. The original Tori Amos songs, such as the jazzy Pink and Glitter actually work better because of their detachment from traditional Christmas songs, although her insistence that we must ’shower the world’ perhaps show some OCD tendencies that need attending to.

All in all, unless you’re a hardcore Tori Amos fan, you’ll probably just use this as background music whilst the family are too stuffed to talk after the Christmas dinner, but there are still some occassional beautiful melodies that deserve a second listen.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 3:12 pm and is filed under Music, Reviews.

Virgin Music Midwinter Graces Review

Tori Amos – Midwinter Graces

Nov 13, 2009

I’m not sure I’d want Tori Amos as a girlfriend. I expect she’ll get over that fact, given time, but the reason I’ve come to such a conclusion is that you’d never know what mood she was likely to be in from one day to the next. No sooner would you have adapted to her ‘Silent All These Years’ persona than she’d have suddenly turned into the ‘Cornflake Girl’, then before you knew where you were with that she’ll have gone all ‘Van Helden’ on you and turned into a ‘Professional Widow’.

Whilst it’s good for any artist to be able to reinvent themselves from time to time, you can’t help feeling that Amos’s chameleon-like transitions over the years have made it challenging for all but the staunchest of fans to stick with her for any length of time. With that in mind, it’s with a mixture of trepidation and curiosity that a new Tori Amos long player is to be explored.

‘Midwinter Graces’ sees Amos tackling the thorny genre of Christmas songs, reimagining some well-known standards as well as creating some of her own seasonal offerings. Taken at face value, the album is a fairly enjoyable collection, mildly cloying in parts but otherwise palatable enough, and were this by any other artist than Tori Amos it would be easy to write off as little more than a vaguely artistic cash-in. It is by Tori Amos though, and given the thematic intent of a lot of her previous material, taking this album at face value feels strangely uncomfortable.

If there is more to this collection of seemingly innocuous songs than meets the ear, deciphering what that might be is something that devoted fans will no doubt revel in but which is likely to leave the casual listener bemused. If there isn’t and this is simply a collection of seasonal songs put together for no other reason than it’s the time of year for it, then this kind of album coming from an artist such as Tori Amos just doesn’t quite seem to fit.

6/10

By Philip Goodfellow

Cooling in Melbourne

The second night at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre is in the books. Tonight’s performance included “Famous Blue Raincoat,” “That Guy,” Flying Dutchman,” “Cooling,” “Mr. Zebra,” “Taxi Ride” and, during the encore, “Never Seen Blue.” The full setlist has been posted in the Tour section. Thanks again to @onscarletswalk for posting the songs played on Twitter as it happened.

As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts and reviews on the performance. So if you are inclined to share, please use the comment form at the bottom of the page for the second Melbourne show.

Advocate Interview (November 10, 2009)

You build these places that have many rooms that interconnect, and as a composer, I began to see, OK, I’ve been building planets, then you build solar systems, and then you want to build a galaxy. And it has to interweave with each other. That’s what a double album is, it’s building a sonic galaxy, and if you don’t appreciate that form, then there’s no way you can analyze what it is.

Earlier this year, Matthew Breen spoke to Tori on behalf of The Advocate. While the focus was ostensibly the current tour and Abnormally Attracted to Sin, the album it was supporting, Midwinter Graces was also a topic of conversation. In the first part of this feature, posted on the day of the seasonal record’s release, they discuss Midwinter Graces, The Light Princess, composition, double albums and the music industry. The second part will be posted next week.

Thanks to fourseraphs for the link!

read more...

The PS22 Chorus Tackles Midwinter Graces

You know those talented and amazing kids in Mr. B’s PS22 Chorus? Well, they don’t mess around and the 2010 Chorus have already learned a couple songs from Midwinter Graces!

Gregg posted a recording of them performing A Winter’s Carol on YouTube yesterday:

And, one of last year’s soloists, Allie, came back for a visit, learned A Silent Night With You on-the-spot and performed that with the chorus as well:

Damn they’re good!

Sydney Morning Herald Interview (November 13, 2009)

I do think some people excel at making happy little catchy tunes and then there are writers that are strong when they’re going after multi-levelled subjects and subjects that are hard to talk about – and that’s kind of where I’m most comfortable, in talking about the uncomfortable.

Tori was interviewed for the Sydney Morning Herald by Dan Kaufman. They primarily discussed Abnormally Attracted to Sin: its themes and inspirations with a nod to song-writing in general.

Thanks to orfeo and Shane for catching this one!

This interview was also reprinted on Stuff.co.nz.

read more...

New York Magazine Interview (November 11, 2009)

Of all the music that my dad turned me on to, the Christmas carols are what I related to a lot more than any religious music that the Methodists were pushing.

This short interview regarding the genesis of Midwinter Graces appeared on New York Magazine’s culture blog Vulture on November 11th.

Thanks to Dina, Ingrid and Mark-Alexis for bringing it to our attention!

read more...