Tori Amos
To Venus and Back

THE REVIEW

During the Plugged Tour '98, Tori, while engaging in concert activity, works on new songs with the musicians who have been with her since the previous album. Soon the Atlantic considers releasing a collection of rarities, but Tori prefers to quickly assemble a proper album with her "boys." In the end, from outtakes to studio production, it becomes a double album that also includes tracks recorded during the same tour.
When there are such reassessments and/or doubts in the artistic field that are linked or guided by typical market logic, the average listener usually has doubts before conducting a detailed analysis of the product.
And if Tori (or those behind her) wasn't so sure of the new songs and thus added a live album to earn forgiveness from battalions of fans?
Or is the studio album just an excuse to release a simple live album? The answers could be both, because as far as the first CD is concerned, it is a punch in the gut compared to the praised "From The Choirgirl Hotel," while in the second, as she dreamed as a child, she is definitively consecrated as a star in the rock firmament.

However, looking less superficially, one can notice that even Venus.orbiting. (in the studio) has its own homogeneity, and the common denominator is the level of Amos's compositions disgracefully plummeting. Often the radical changes in instrumentation and arrangements between one track and another seem just a farce to make the listener believe they are listening to a worthy successor of the previous album.
Venus follows the trail of the "electronic" of any Cruel or the more spartan rock model à la Spark, always pushing the boundaries already explored to the extreme, but if after a few listens you hold onto the armrests and manage to endure the mass rape recounted in Juarez (a "coincidence" track number 2 on the list like Cruel), the electronic drums and the feedback of Bliss (read Spark) are already checkmate for dear Tori, who, however, is only at her first track and leading single. A track like Bliss, so intimate and personal, styled with a jaunty chorus in D major and a mischievous drum machine/bass combo with a pick sounds ultimately fake. More stereotypical is the third track (another useful single) Concertina, well-calibrated between verses and chorus, with impeccable production, radio-perfect, infinitely singable... but unfortunately, millions of pixels and easy listening do not necessarily mean emotions, feelings, a lump in the throat. Then comes Glory of the 80's, obtuse and vulgar, starting with the video (it almost seems like a vice of artists in crisis to fiercely cling to criticizing past fashions) and leading to useless electronic swarms like Riot Poof and Datura or sleepy tracks like Lust or Suede, which are supposed to be the ballads of the moment, but unfortunately do not have a shred of the pathos of a Marianne or a Playboy Mommy.
From the fourth track onwards, the album definitively stumbles, and even if, incredulously, you persist in listening to it again, there will be few anchors, like Josephine (pleasant, no strokes of genius anyway) and 1000 Oceans, one of the most tender moments of the album, supported by an unnecessarily weak rhythm that seems more like a poor radio remix of itself than the original version (it was the last single left, amen).

What really saves this double album is the second disc: Venus. live. still orbiting, Tori radically renews the arrangements, and the magic of From The Choirgirl Hotel repeats. The choice of tracks then, and here is the songwriter's hand, leans more towards an original atmosphere than one of the usual celebratory live albums. In short, the second CD is a sincere collection of tracks, not just any greatest hits. Sure enough, we cannot find elsewhere the delirium of Precious Things and the flights of Cornflake Girl (extended to 7 minutes) as much as the -really raw- Cruel and the zeppelin-like improvisation on The Waitress (11 minutes).
The two b-sides Cooling and Purple People make an appearance, with the latter closing the show. Will Tori be satisfied with this album?
I speak for myself and describe myself as half content: double album, 50% disappointment.