floatingcity's Full Review: Strange Little Girls by Tori Amos
Pretty much every successful artist reaches a point in their career in which they release a near-total dud – and for Tori Amos, it is definitely this album. Released partly to fulfil her recording contract with Atlantic Records, I get the distinct impression that impending fiscal freedom overshadowed creativity during the creation of this record.
Thematically, it seems promising. The album groups twelve songs written and performed by male artists, and twists each to a feminine perspective, with the overall goal of commenting upon the misogynistic attitudes still present within society. However, a brief look at the songs chosen indicates little attention to this concept. It would arguably have been very easy for Amos to have found any number of rock, metal or hip-hop lyrics that degraded women to the extreme, but instead, she merely creates a hodge-podge assortment of tracks – if you weren’t aware of the theme through reading interviews with Tori, no amount of listening to this album would make it clearer; as a result, it ends up feeling clumsy and poorly thought-out.
That’s not to say it’s a complete failure. Her much publicized cover of Eminem’s “’'97 Bonnie & Clyde” is quietly horrifying, as the song’s protagonist shifts from Eminem’s protective father to Amos’ dying mother, her throat slit in the back of a car as her partner makes their daughter an accomplice to her ocean burial ("Baby, don’t cry honey, don’t get the wrong idea/Mama’s too sleepy to hear you screamin’ in her ear/That’s why you can’t get her to wake, but don’t worry/Da-da made a nice bed for mommy at the bottom of the lake"). A grave, morose string section plays a gradually ascending riff of sorts, giving a feeling of motion as Amos whispers the previously rapped-lyrics, singing only the poignant “Just the two of us” refrain. Her slip into the odd piece of baby talk as she addresses her young child makes the song sound even more sinister; while it’s not the kind of thing you could listen to on repeat, it does its job wonderfully, Tori reclaiming the song as her own. This story is continued in “Strange Little Girl”, which has the most memorable melody and chorus on the album. Unsurprisingly, it’s the song most adherent to a traditional structure, getting loud and guitar/drum-driven in all the right places, and could easily find radio airplay. Narrative-wise, the child of “’'97 Bonnie & Clyde” has grown up, but into a whirlwind individual who struggles to deal with her own involvement in her mother’s death.
Elsewhere, “New Age” introduces the album’s theme decently enough with a Wurlitzer, rock backing and some distort on Tori’s vocals. She sings from the throat in a growling fashion; it’s bearable if a little annoying, combining to make the song merely passable. “Real Men” is a big improvement and acts as a thoughtful closer: it’s just Tori and piano, but the melody on the verses is very memorable, making up for the fact that the chorus is weaker. A few of the lyrics also hint nicely at the ‘alternate lens’ concept and challenge conceptions of masculinity based on female degradation: "Man makes a gun - man goes to war/Man can kill and man can drink/And man can take a wh*re/Kill all the blacks - kill all the reds/If there’s war between the sexes/Then there’ll be no people left". Other tracks such as “Rattlesnakes” and “Time” are a little questionable regarding the theme, but the former is a perfectly competent bit of pop-rock with a moderately memorable refrain, and “Time” has a pleasant enough vocal-and-piano combination, if outstaying its welcome with a five-and-a-half minute length.
Unfortunately, the bulk of the other songs are total write-offs. Tori’s cover of 10cc’s “I’m Not In Love” fails in its attempts to challenge male attitudes to sex, and ends up a total drag. A slow drum machine coupled with the odd bit of tape hiss and piano tapping acts as the musical backing, Tori delivering a flat, monotonous vocal performance. The introduction of some atmospheric noise and a bit of discordant guitar can’t save the song from its destiny as a meandering bore, and it ends up sounding completely uninspired. Similarly, Slayer’s “Raining Blood” is transformed into a soundscape consisting of some synthesised, oddly flatulent noises and a moderately creepy piano line, but there’s absolutely no development or movement across the whole six-plus minutes. And if that wasn’t bad enough, “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” sees Tori taking a formerly short Beatles song, dragging it out to ten minutes and trying to make an obvious statement about gun-related violence with soundbites from her own father, the news reports concerning John Lennon’s murder, and President Bush. It’s a gelatinous blob of a song that goes on and on and on, and is easily the worst thing Tori has ever recorded. The ruinous “Heart of Gold” is nearly as wretched, consisting of a screeching five-note electric guitar riff repeating for four minutes; the background harmony vocals are a complete mess, and it’s almost impossible to understand what point is trying to be made.
The remaining two covers on the album are of The Boomtown Rats’ “I Don’t Like Mondays” and Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy The Silence”. “Mondays” has Tori singing over a soft vibraphone backing that ends up rather non-descript and forgettable, while “Enjoy The Silence” becomes a gentle ballad. It has some nice strings and piano playing, but it can’t hold a candle to the crackling electronic original.
As an album, “Strange Little Girls” has the misfortune of being filled with cover versions that aren’t able to do its intriguing concept justice. Despite the odd genuinely inspired moment (“’'97 Bonnie & Clyde”) and some beautiful artwork (featuring Tori expertly styled as the female protagonists of the songs), muddy production, flat singing, and a black hole of creativity rapidly drain both the album and the listener’s patience. She’d bounce back with “Scarlet’s Walk”, but “Strange Little Girls” remains an unnecessary and unimaginative black mark on Tori Amos’ catalogue.
The new studio album from Tori Amos, Strange Little Girls, is an assemblage of songs written by men, but performed by Tori from the perspectives of a ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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