News: The Financial Times' ADP Review

A search of the The Financial Times website (never hurts to do a quick check when visiting a site for the first time in a while), turned up their review of American Doll Posse. It was published back on April 28th, so they’re not a candidate for the latest review of the album booby prize … but we deserve a little egg on our face for missing this before.

FT WEEKEND – CRITIC’S CHOICE: POP & ROCK CDs

By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney, Financial Times
Published: Apr 28, 2007

Tori Amos
American Doll Posse
Columbia

Having emerged in the early 1990s writing autobiographical songs – “Me and a Gun” was about her experience of being raped – Tori Amos has left memoir far behind her. American Doll Posse is her most ambitious album yet, which, considering the idiosyncratic nature of her work – her previous LP was a concept album themed around gardens – is no small achievement.

The songs are sung from the point of view of five female characters Amos has invented, “Isobel”, “Pip”, “Clyde”, “Santa” and “Tori”. Based on Greek mythic archetypes – Isobel channels Artemis, Pip represents Athena, and so on – each has her own musical mood, the aim being to challenge the black-and-white view of womanhood in George W. Bush’s US. An eccentric riposte to the evangelical right, the album’s sprawling nature tests the listener’s patience, though it’s worth it for the moments when Amos’s unpredictability gels with her ear for pop hooks. There are some powerful melodies here, the strongest since Amos’s early work. Pip, clearly a rocker at heart, provides the highlights.