For the L.A. Times’ Margaret Wrappler, Tori Amos is the “reigning muse for mystic goth girls” and her new album, Abnormally Attracted To Sin, is “a 17-song stem trunk of an album [striking] an uncanny balance between Victorian-inspired decadence, mythical pathos and arch camp”.

Over at the BBC, they say the new album is “a bit of a meal to get through, with random styles zigzagging about, a little editing may have helped it to be more memorable rather than just slightly exhausting” while Spin’s review from last month said “on her tenth studio album, Tori Amos writes no less penetratingly than she did on her first about the way women navigate the intersection between sex and power.”

Ed Miller over at Drowned In Sound says “Blame Facebook. Blame YouTube. Or blame the culture of bite-sized entertainment that is slowly eroding our ability to concentrate, but on the 14th track of Tori Amos’ new album Abnormally Attracted to Sin, your mind begins to wander. Then, by the time you hit the 73rd minute of this eighteen-track epic, you realise (sic) with panic that you’ve got to start the second half again, cause you missed it all.”

I’ll say from the start that Tori Amos’ music has never done much to impress me. I tried hard to like Little Earthquakes back when it was released ‘cuz everyone was making a big deal about her and I wanted to be in the know, in the loop. But, I couldn’t make it happen, try though I might. Too navel gazing earth chick for me. Tori fans will disagree when I say not much has changed over the past ten albums; I can’t hear any nuances that make this much different from any other.

In other words, you might find “mythical pathos and arch camp” in this record but, for me, the school bus to “arch camp” left before I could pack my sleeping bag.

Tori Amos – Give
Tori Amos – Welcome To England
Tori Amos – Strong Black Vine
Tori Amos – Flavor
Tori Amos – Not Dying Today

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 9:17 am and is filed under News, Views, Props and Missives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.