Tori Amos takes on larger themes and a larger sound with her new
American Doll Posse. By Mikael Wood
“I’m obsessed with women’s stories,” says Tori Amos, “how they’ve been able to negotiate what their place is at the roundtable.”
No one who’s heard a single album of Amos’s is likely to disagree with her claim. Since her 1992 breakthrough,
Little Earthquakes, the singer-pianist has investigated the social, biological, and political implications of womanhood with an unflinching honesty that’s won her both ardent fans and outspoken critics. On her latest album,
American Doll Posse, Amos reacts to the current climate in
America with musical portraits of distinct female archetypes. “All of these women are different components of a complete female essence,” Amos says. “And I’m exploring bringing these different components together in one woman. As every woman begins to do that, then you’re dealing with some pretty powerful forces.”
Your last album, 2005’s The Beekeeper, had a mellow, contemplative vibe. This new one rocks a lot harder. Each record is its own sonic exhibition, and you have to look at them within their context.
The Beekeeper was written at a time when I thought things were about to change; that record was about seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, with the dove of peace coming out. When I was writing, I was seeing that people wanted more of a diplomatic approach to problems instead of a confrontational approach.
Things turned out differently than you expected. Because that didn’t happen, it was time to say, “Okay, if we’re going to take on the patriarchy and its ideology, then what do you do? If it’s too loud, turn it up.” Sometimes that’s the only way that you can hear.
Was that louder, punk-inspired sound your idea for the album right from the start? I can hear all the arrangements when they’re coming in my head. I always have; that’s how it happens. This is one record where I realized the diversity that the musicians would have to have. Stylistically, everybody would really have to understand how to play this kind of music, even if they weren’t brought up on punk music.
These days you live and record in England, which gives you, as an American, a unique perspective on the United States. I wrote this in America — I had to. I have a little beach house in
Florida, and I’m there more than people realize. But I keep a low profile. I don’t show up anywhere, because I don’t want to be observed. I’m the observer, you see. And how can you be collecting your information and studying your subject if the camera’s turned on you all the time? That would blow your cover.
What were you watching for? To see how American women were interpreting what is happening to our country, how we’re perceived in the rest of the world. And I was fascinated by what I found. Some didn’t really see how it affected their day hour by hour; some did. But the one thing that I felt I had to do was ask myself why so few are doing so little. That’s what propelled me.
Tori Amos
American Doll Posse
(Epic)
Tori Amos has got the blues. I’m not talking about her frequently personal and heavy lyrical ruminations; I’m talking about her latest album. Amos has reportedly said that she wanted to bring out her warrior woman this time, and the bluesy, classic-rock vibe here gives her emotional music the extra kick that’s missing from her albums
Scarlet’s Walk and
The Beekeeper. While Amos has focused more on a group format for her recent albums,
American Doll Posse serves up raunchier electric guitar and snarling electric slide work in places. That’s her Led Zeppelin side coming out, and it imbues tunes like “You Can Bring Your Dog” and “Body and Soul” with an edge that echoes the
Little Earthquakes and
Under the Pink days without revisiting them. On the flip side, the album also features signature Amos balladry (“Roosterspur Bridge” and the short and sweet “Devils and Gods”), orchestrated pop (“Girl Disappearing” and “Programmable Soda”), and even an Italian-flavored acoustic number (“Velvet Revolution”).
American Doll Posse tells stories from the lives of five different female characters but without as many cryptic lyrical references as have permeated many of her albums. Even though Amos has always been an artist with something to say, her last couple of albums seemingly fell into a stylistic rut, something that the 20 tracks encompassing
American Doll Posse escape from, allowing the enigmatic singer-songwriter more room to roam. She’s working from a wider palette of sounds and styles here, and the music swings and rocks more. If this is Amos’s inner warrior at work, she’s unleashing a hearty battle cry. — Bryan Reesman
I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon
By Crystal Zevon (Ecco, $27)
“All good stories,” Warren Zevon once observed, “end in death.” As a writer, Zevon knew the value of a big finish. By the time he passed away in 2003, at the age of 56, from a form of lung cancer, he’d managed to create a finale worthy of one of his best songs, closing his life and career with the gold-selling album The Wind and with a long, memorable goodbye. One of Zevon’s final wishes was for his ex-wife, Crystal, to author his biography. He implored her to not shy away from exposing the most lurid and unflattering aspects of his life when writing the book, telling her, “You’ve got to tell the whole truth, even the awful, ugly parts, ’cause that’s the excitable boy who wrote them excitable songs.” Her nearly four-year effort — during which she conducted close to 90 interviews and pored over dozens of private journals — has resulted in this remarkable history. As its title suggests, the book is an unflinching look at an always complex, frequently unpleasant, ultimately singular figure. Zevon’s peers — Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Neil Young — lauded his work, but Zevon joked that he was “a folk singer who accidentally had one big hit”; he saw the success of 1978’s “Werewolves of London” as an aberration in a career that was as commercially frustrating as his work was brilliant. I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead is testament to Zevon’s remarkable life: His childhood — his father was a Jewish gangster, his mother a Mormon — and his early years knocking about the Los Angeles music scene are as entertaining as his later, more publicized successes and as interesting as his battles with booze and self-destruction. Crystal, a journalist and a media activist, has constructed an utterly riveting tale that spares nothing and no one — including herself — detailing Zevon’s addictions, infidelities, and most intimate moments in an effort to make this rare and troubled talent understood. — Bob Mehr
The Biography: Dr. Dre
By Ronin Ro (Thunder’s Mouth Press, $25)
Before such a title would have been considered an insult, many observers had trumpeted rap producer Dr. Dre as “the Phil Spector of hip-hop.” It was an apt enough comparison, as both men had reshaped the music industry, redefined youth culture, and made massive fortunes through their sheer creativity and sonic innovation in the recording studio. With The Biography, Ronin Ro — an award-winning nonfiction reporter and prolific author — attempts to examine the life and work of a gifted and frequently conflicted visionary. The book moves quickly through the early years of Compton-bred Andre Young, finding its feet in exploring the fascination that the newly christened Dr. Dre had with the still-fledgling early ’80s rap game. As the creative force behind controversial group NWA, Dre achieved his first great triumph while peddling a hard-core thug image that would haunt him in later years. He was a millionaire by the time he was 24, but his success was blighted by the death of his younger brother in a street fight in 1989. Dre then branched off into a solo career, and the creation and impact of The Chronic, his 1992 zeitgeist-altering masterpiece, is explored in vivid detail. The juiciest parts of the story concern Dre’s role in the meteoric rise of Death Row records, the label he built with notorious gangster figure Suge Knight. Ro, who explored the more lurid details of the Dre/Death Row relationship in Have Gun Will Travel, his study of the label, dissects the years of fear, feuding, and recrimination that followed their split in 1996. Though the book has a few narrative lulls as Dre quietly coasts through the late ’90s, the story eventually picks up pace, exploring his more recent work with Eminem and 50 Cent — associations that have ushered in another, even more lucrative era of success. Impeccably researched, and written with an intuitive grasp of insider politics, the book is a welcome and necessary addition to the growing library of hip-hop scholarship, even if it doesn’t quite feel like the definitive portrait its title suggests. — B.M.
Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer
By Chris Salewicz (Faber and Faber, $30)
Despite the Clash’s status as “the Only Band That Matters,” for years there was little published on the revered British rock group. Only Marcus Gray’s 1996 demystifying The Last Gang in Town attempted to recount the band’s relatively brief but eventful history in any detail. However, since front man Joe Strummer’s tragic death from an undiagnosed heart defect in 2002, there’s been an explosion of books — covering everything from studies devoted to the group’s politics to its recording techniques. Into this suddenly crowded field comes Chris Salewicz’s Strummer bio, Redemption Song. It bills itself as the definitive biography, and it’s a claim the author can make legitimately, as he was a longtime intimate of the group and regarded by Strummer as the “only journalist he trusted.” The book’s narrative is unique, too: Part traditional bio, part personal remembrance, and part investigative odyssey, it feels more like the result of a serious quest than a quick cashing in. Born John Mellor, Strummer was raised the privileged son of a well-traveled, and traveling, foreign diplomat. It was this itinerant childhood that helped him develop his curiosity about different types of music and cultures. An art-school failure, Strummer first came to fame leading London pub rockers the 101ers, but he ditched that band in 1976 in favor of the burgeoning punk movement. Pairing up with songwriter/partner Mick Jones, bassist Paul Simonon, drummer Topper Headon, and manager/provocateur Bernie Rhodes, he formed the Clash. As other punk groups fell by the wayside, the Clash evolved musically and personally, achieving an unprecedented global success before imploding under the weight of Strummer’s leadership in 1985. With the cooperation of family, friends, and bandmates, Salewicz offers plenty of fresh insights, particularly concerning the suicide of Strummer’s older brother and the singer’s own lifelong battles with depression. Redemption Song, however, is not hagiography: The author doesn’t hesitate to portray the many sides of Strummer’s complex, contradictory, and often hypocritical personality, offering what should be the final word on the Clash and its leader. — B.M.