News: Allmusic Midwinter Grace Review

Allmusic.com has added Stephen Thomas Erlewine’s review of Midwinter Graces to their Tori Amos discography. Erlewine gives it 3 of 5 stars and describing it as, “an easy listening version of all her signatures in one tidy, not so-Christmasy, package.”

Huh.

Thanks to luke for the link!

Midwinter Graces
Tori Amos
Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

She may be the daughter of a reverend, but Tori Amos never seemed the likeliest candidate for a Christmas album; she might sing about “God”, but her music always seemed secular and never seasonal, but in a year that brought holiday albums by Bob Dylan and Sting, it makes perfect sense that Tori should deliver one, too. Amos’ entry, Midwinter Graces, may be as unlikely as Dylan’s, but it’s closer in tenor to Sting’s: it’s deliberately reserved and chilly, capturing the wintriness of the season while studiously avoiding the joy. Tori reworks many familiar carols, tweaking lyrics and pushing them together into a medley, so they sound quite similar to the newly written tunes that comprise the rest of the record. Thanks to some familiar melodies, it can sometimes seem seasonally appropriate, but it always seems purely Tori, who has somehow managed to deliver an easy listening version of all her signatures in one tidy, not so-Christmasy, package.