CD Project Thing #6 - Tori Amos, pt. 3

Tori Amos - "To Venus And Back" (2 discs)

Disc one is a studio album. It's another "alternative-band" type album, a lot like the previous one except a little more electronic sounding and maybe a little less rock. It's quite a good album, though, a few songs on this are among the best I've heard from her so far.The second disc is a live disc recorded on her '98 tour. As you'll see going forward, I tend to not have very much to say about live discs. It's decent enough, I guess, except that she didn't end up picking many of the songs I especially like, so it doesn't do a whole lot for me.

Tori Amos - "Strange Little Girls"

Another topic I never have much to say about? Cover albums. I never know how to judge them - is it good to have lots of songs I know, or bad? Is it good if the songs sound the same, or bad? Who knows? For the record, most of the songs on here I don't know, but the ones I do sound very different, so they probably all do. Except for a few expiermental type things (an Ememim cover that's mostly spoken word, a Beatles cover with lots of sampled soundbits), most of the music here is pretty soft and low-key. It's nothing bad exactly, but it sounds like it could be the b-sides of a real album. (The funny part is, the "Crucify" EP, where the covers WERE the b-sides of a real album, was much more interesting than this).

Tori Amos - "Scarlett's Walk" (with bonus DVD)

Tori's first with a new label, and it's a bit of a return to form, sounding more like her first two albums than anything she'd done since then. This is a concept album about a girl walking across the country or something, but what it seems to mean is lots songs (like 18!), mostly very piano-heavy. Marisa liked this a lot when she first got it (I actually got it for her, and did a price match to get the (fairly pointless special edition) for the same price as the regular album), so she played it a lot, so a lot of the songs I already knew (and sometimes even get stuck in my head). It's really a surprisingly good album.

Tori had another album past this ("The Beekeeper"), and we even owned it for a day, but Marisa thought it was so boring we sold it after one listen. Is this the end for Tori as a decent artist, or can she bounce back? She has a new album out next year, I suppose we'll find out then.