Tori Amos
Abnormally Attracted to Sin

Warning #1: handle with care forums, boards, conversations in line at the supermarket with anyone who has listened to, worshiped, idolized, and shared orgasms with Tori Amos 1992-2001. Objectivity is a difficult weapon to wield (or recover, depending on the levels of desperation) in such circumstances.

Warning #2: listen to the album once, entirely, from the first to the last, and then start to chop, move, in a few words, edit at your leisure and according to the stimuli of your sensory apparatus (hearing and beyond). It might not be our task, and I agree, but the author herself has described her latest work as "omni-comprehensive," including those which, long ago, were the highly anticipated and loved B-sides, so there it is. You can’t blame her if she thinks she's doing a favor by including in the tracklist songs that would only have ended up on B-sides of disks sold for 10,000 lire and which, indeed, we would now almost do without them sparkling in the lineup.

In short, to put it briefly and in her own admission, the singer-songwriter in question does not have great self-editing skills. "You can write but you can't edit," said Regina Spektor, and one cannot help but agree.

That said, proceed to listening, keeping in mind that the years are what they are, and they weigh (no matter how much we try to banish them with winking photos ridiculously victimized by Photoshop and the like, or visualettes with a deliberately amateur flavor that, in most cases, result in being more or less useless or out of place), the voices can no longer be what they used to be (but there have been worse times) and, above all, that a woman can't always be there droning to us (albeit with our immense enjoyment) her musings on chickens tasting your flesh, unprocessed abortions, interpersonal relationships with half the solar system, and walks of Santiago.

At this point, there will be 17 songs (18 plus the bonus track "Oscar's Theme" which, dedicated or not to her new puppy, is a delightful little song) of which almost ten should be praised with more than respectable marks.

They should be, we must specify. Because, as mentioned, prejudice is the worst of insults. Almost as much as the cliché. Almost as much as the fear of non-belonging. Certainly more than inflicting oneself the suffering of listening to this musical trash (to paraphrase opinions skimmed here and there).

Among that dozen survivors, just to name a few, maybe your attention will be captured by the piano turn, perhaps a bit already heard but certainly enchanting of "Curtain Call", a thinly veiled vitriolic critique of a music industry that rarely delivers what it promises, or the deliberately, and get used to it, boosted vocal lines of the theatrical "That Guy", or yet again the classic repertoire of "Ophelia" who always chooses the wrong men ("Change Waltzes In With Her Sister Pain", thank you Mary Ellen for still being able to write these things) or the veiled desperation of "Lady In Blue" who let go of her only right man.

"Lady in blue", rightly: you haven't heard something like that for at least a couple of albums. A track that live is found naked and sincere even more than in the version on the album.

And yet "Starling" and "Flavour", just the right blend between the journey to Venus and the often unsuccessful musical approaches (we're not deaf) of recent years, "Fast Horse" which retraces themes and sounds of that all-round gem (and here too there's much to discuss on how it is still underestimated and mistreated today) which is "Scarlet's Walk".

Then there is "Welcome To England", with low expectations but clever enough that if it were sung by someone twenty years younger it would be playing on the radio three times as much as it does now, "Abnormally Attracted To Sin" with its spatial nuances and "Give" acting as a crystal clear declaration of intent.

Among the rest, I concede, there's something that would make the same fathers called into question by Ophelia turn in their graves. "500 Miles" is as embarrassing as the worst 80s TV themes by Cristina D'Avena and, still staying in the same decade, "Police Me" is an evident discard of "Y Kant Tori Read".
Alongside them, at least two other tracks that deserved the aforementioned self-censorship.

Life is made of difficult choices and in 2009 Tori Amos feels (mistakenly) so sure of herself and her abilities that she no longer wants to question herself. If she understands how wrong such a policy is, deciding to challenge herself thoroughly, or if she continues to perpetuate this narrow path, it is not for us to decree. What befits us is to listen to the work of an artist who has proven herself in ways that deserved and, especially now, still deserve our respect. The personal opinion, heaven forbid, is an immediately subsequent stage and certainly of fundamental value: it is always our power to support or not economically the product in question.

Meanwhile, we might start by clearing our minds a little and let for a moment that objectivity, for better and especially for worse, prevails.
If you do, perhaps (but only perhaps, and without any accusation) you will find yourself appreciating something about this tenth and long-awaited work of the alluring and exceedingly enticing pianist transplanted in England with all her sunshine.
If not, patience. It's not a race to recover the salvageable, because anyway one doesn't live by Tori Amos alone.

And thank heaven.