Tori Amos: Night of Hunters – review

Her musical for the National theatre won't be unveiled until 2012, but Amos's 12th album feels like a companion project. Arranged for piano, brass, strings and woodwind, and billed by the singer as "an ongoing, modern love story", it plays out like an intermittently absorbing, if overly demanding, night at the theatre. Devotees will no doubt swoon (and sceptics scoff) at its florid excesses, but Amos's voice possesses enough conviction and personality to breathe life into what could have been an orchestral folly. And taken in isolation, songs such as "Nautical Twilight" and "Edge of the Moon" make for fine, melodramatic pop.