With the release of her eighth studio album, Tori Amos has travelled into the realms of pure hype. She is no mere singer-songwriter but "a rider of the waves", according to Ann Powers, in the forthcoming book Tori Amos: Piece by Piece. The book's publishers describe her as "a kind of superwoman". Despite all that, this is a pretty good record, whose 19 tracks dovetail into some kind of concept involving hexagons, beehives and six gardens of the emotions. You can delve as deeply into the lyrics and musical brain-teasers as you like, but there's plenty of surface allure for anyone who just fancies a superficial graze.
Amos has kept the tracks light and airy, enhancing the always-attractive melodies with carefully layered vocal arrangements and often applying an arresting twist of processed funkiness. There's an overall mood of mystical self-exploration, intertwined with recurring echoes of Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush, but Amos fans wouldn't expect anything less.
