Abnormally attracted to... mediocrity?

Let me say this first: I'm a fan of Tori Amos. True, I don't happen to think she's a goddess and I don't take her half as seriously as most of her fanbase does, but I do appreciate her music and I enjoy listening to or reading her interviews because she sometimes has interesting things to say about music (and often befuddles the interviewer, which is always fun to watch).

Sadly, Tori albums tend to be hit-or-miss affairs these days. She hasn't produced really great albums for a long time. To be fair, there were some great tracks on those albums, but they were ultimately overpowered by the mediocrity. Her latest, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, continues this unfortunate trend. If she wants to reverse it and start making good albums again, there are two things she's got to work on.

Number one: as another pianist and singer-songwriter says, "You can write, but you can't edit." Tori can't edit. At 17 tracks, AATS is shorter than the 23-track behemoth that is American Doll Posse, but it's still needlessly bloated. Tori has to figure out that sometimes less really is more. In my opinion, her best album was From the Choirgirl Hotel. It only had 12 tracks, but not one of them was a throwaway. In contrast, half the stuff on AATS could easily be labeled "filler." Just like her previous two albums, there are some great songs here. The shimmering, spare "Flavor," the powerful piano outro of "Lady in Blue," the quirky "That Guy" and a few others are all proof of that. But because she either can't or won't edit herself, the good ones get buried beneath tracks like the trite "500 Miles" or the chaotic mess that is "Police Me." Please, Tori, either get better at editing yourself or get somebody who isn't afraid to say no to you.

Number two: be more genuine. This album is a tired rehashing of every theme she's ever covered. I cringe every time I hear "Strong Black Vine" because it's exactly the kind of song that Tori has done to death. It's a paint-by-numbers "the patriarchy is evil" song, a pale imitation of something like "God" from Under the Pink. Where "God" was intriguing and powerful, "Strong Black Vine" falls flat because of its utter predictability. Sorry, but singing about saving soldiers from their "evil faith" is no longer shocking. Try again.

I get the sense listening to this album that Tori's gotten stuck in the mold of her image: I am Tori Amos therefore I must write about feminism and religion and spirituality. I'm not saying she should suppress or change her beliefs, but writing about them isn't convincing if there's no emotion behind it, and these songs, to me, often feel emotionally lifeless. The "visualettes" she released with each track on the album, in which she parades about in wigs and couture looking bored, add to the impression that her heart's not really in it. Choirgirl wasn't a great album just because it was short. She was going through a difficult and painful time in her life when she recorded it, and you could feel that emotion clearly in the music. On AATS, it sounds like she's phoning it in. Let's be clear here: I have no desire to see Tori suffer for her art, but I'd like to see some honesty.

So please, Tori... take the wigs off.

It must be summer

Ping!

It's three forty-five in the morning, and with that sound I'm instantly awake, if not precisely alert, and already well on my way to being really cranky.

I know that sound came from my harp, but I don't immediately understand how. For a moment I think stupidly of bugs careening into the soundboard, then of a scene in The Haunting in which a harp begins to play by itself. Then I realize a) I'm being an idiot, b) the air conditioning isn't on yet, and c) I left the window open.

Grumbling, I heave myself out of bed and shuffle over to the harp, knowing already what I'll find. Yep, here it is... the remains of a broken string, up near the top. I've been lucky with this harp - I've had it for about five years and this is only the second broken string I've had. Strings always break sooner or later, sometimes because of the wear and tear of playing and sometimes because of fluctuations in temperature. (Apparently it was the latter that did in this one.) So it's a perfectly natural thing for a string to do. It's merely unfortunate that it reached the breaking point so early in the morning.

Makes a hell of an alarm clock, though.