News: Chicago Tribune ADP Review

The Chicago Tribune yesterday offered its review of American Doll Posse (registration required). Read on to see what critic Greg Kot had to say.

Amos’ heavy rock textures suit new ‘Doll Posse’

By Greg Kot
Tribune music critic
Published May 18, 2007

The glam rockers of the ’70s got outside of their skins by trying on costumes, donning wigs and generally acting out. Tori Amos can relate. On her latest album, “American Doll Posse” (Epic), she gives voice to no fewer than five distinct versions of herself.

No one should be surprised. In a career that stretches nearly two decades, she has sold 12 million albums that celebrate the female personality in all its guises.

The singer’s 2001 covers album — “Strange Little Girls” — found her taking songs written from a male point of view and giving them a feminine twist. On the 2002 “Scarlet’s Walk,” her alter-ego Scarlet journeys across a nation in the midst of political and social upheaval. Now comes “American Doll Posse,” in which the piano-playing songwriter gives five personas free rein: There’s the wary hippie Clyde, the edgy Pip, the vixen Santa, the outspoken Isabel and Tori herself. Each persona has her own wig, costume and Web site.

The concept feeds her friskiest, earthiest and catchiest album in quite some time. The 23 songs are divvied up to suit the five characters’ voices, and the music stretches as wide as their personalities: the chamber-pop of “Programmable Soda,” the gypsy flair of “Velvet Revolution,” the vampy cabaret of “Mr. Bad Man,” the disco groove of “Bouncing Off Clouds,” the syncopated strut of “Big Wheel,” the chiming guitar rock of “Secret Spell.”

Amos has always embraced melody, but rarely has she grounded her tunes with such heavy rock textures.

The album opens with a song chastising a certain president (“Yo George”), but its politics are primarily personal. Once again she takes on patriarchy in all its forms (in the church, in the White House, on the battlefield and in the bedroom).

Into that world she injects Clyde, Pip, Santa, Isabel and Tori, and demands that they not only be allowed to coexist, but flourish.