News: City Life Magazine ADP Review

Mark Licea told us about this American Doll Posse review from Las Vegas’s City Life Magazine.

Tori Amos
American Doll Posse (Epic)

Another week, another concept record from the alt-rock crowd. That said, you can’t accuse Tori Amos of succumbing to the herd mentality because she’s been making thematic records most of her career. For her eighth studio album, Amos gets ambitious as she channels through five different characters — including her namesake, fashioned largely after herself, or so we assume — that are hardly perfect but embody typically suppressed — and ultimately empowering — characteristics. Like a mythological and feminine Voltron, they — or, rather, their songs — come together to form a woman in full, one uncompromised by a sexist society or patriarchal spirituality.

But unless you enjoy sitting in front of your stereo or computer with the lyric sheet, American Doll Posse doesn’t easily reveal the five personas or even the discernible differences between them. Furthermore, their perspectives sound similar to those in Amos’ previous work. What is different, though, is her more blatant foray into political prose. She starts the album with the Bush-bashing “Yo George,” and, as the same character, laments the war in “Dark Side of the Sun,” which addresses both soldier and lover.

Another deviation from her recent material is the return of the electric guitar. Though Amos’ Bösendorfer piano remains front and center, there’s a subtle muscularity to most of the songs here, and it’s nice to hear the juxtaposition of the music’s assertiveness and the singer’s airy croon. It gives her compositions a sense of urgency, not to mention another point of entry for the listener. Her last two records were overloaded with relatively tuneless songs, and while American also goes on too long — the self-produced Amos could benefit from a no-man in the studio — this time her melodicism is consistent and as sharp as her wit, driven by the tandem work of piano and guitar. Whether you hear the whole posse or just Amos herself, her artistry’s unconventional seductiveness cannot be denied.

MIKE PREVATT