News: Soundi's Gold Dust Review

Finnish magazine Soundi reviews Gold Dust in its new issue. The bad news is, the whole review is in Finnish, and most of us don’t speak or read Finnish. The good news is, an anonymous birdie translated it for us. Click through the jump to read Petri Silas’ critical look at the collection.

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Gold Dust (3 out of 5 stars)
by Petri Silas

Gold Dust, Tori Amos’s thirteenth studio album, recycles Amos’s own material in the same frame as her previous record, Night of Hunters (2011): An orchestral background, arranged by John Philip Shenale, and above that the 1963 born singer’s far-reaching, expressive and distinctive voice. While it was the actual content(s) that made last year’s record such an impressive, cross-musical triumph, here the ice is thinner.

The genius idea of Night of Hunters was to combine the lyrics, detailing a story by Amos, with compositions by Satie, Debussy, Mussorgsky and Bach, among others. At their best the results were totally out-there and innovative, as heard in such songs as “Cactus” [sic] and “The Chase.” But here we have a situation where there has been no attempt to even come up with anything new or unique. Many singers have chosen to do a romanticized reading of their old songs with strings and woodwinds — and many more will in the future. This production, too, has the obvious stamp of something done in between projects.

“Precious Things,” “Winter” and “Silent All These Years,” for example, are already in their original form some of the finest artpop of our time, and Gold Dust does nothing to increase their value. “The emperor’s new clothes,” some might even cry out in their anger.