Album Review: Tori Amos- Unrepentant Geraldines

Like most people, I went through my Tori Amos phase when I was in college.

I was always aware of Tori Amos—how could you not be, growing up in the 90s? “Cornflake Girl” was pretty much everywhere in 1994. But I had never really given her a chance until 2002’s Scarlet’s Walk, an album I bought on a whim because it was so cheap at Wal Mart.

For a bulk of her career, it seemed like Amos was exhausting the same idea on each album—stretching it out to nearly the full 80 minutes of a compact disc, creating a very dense, sometimes confusing, concept album. The best execution of this came in 1996 on Boys For Pele, which to this day, is still an incredible, bizarre, and wonderful record. Less than a decade later, on The Beekeeper, it seemed like Amos’ penchant for this trick had worn out its welcome.

To be honest, I kind of stopped paying attention to Tori Amos after 2007’s cringe-worthy American Doll Posse, an album that featured the regrettable lyric, “I am a M.I.L.F. Don’t you forget.”

After dabbling in classical music, and then orchestral rearrangements of her pop catalog, Amos has returned with Unrepentant Geraldines, her 14^th studio album.

Not to sell it short or anything, but it sounds exactly how you would expect a Tori Amos album to sound in 2014—or really any year, for that matter. After the “alternative rock” boom of the early 90s faded away, and as her fans grew up, Amos’ music was adopted by the Album-Oriented Adult Contemporary market, and a majority of Unrepentant Geradlines would sound just fine on a radio station like Minneapolis’ own Cities 97.

And I mean, that’s fine. At 50, Amos has naturally grown into that role, and expecting her to make another album where she’s banging on a harpsichord, screaming things like “You think I’m a queer!” and “Give me peace, love, and a hard cock,” is just totally out of the question.

Like always, Amos is at her best when she is her most dramatic, and most emotionally manipulative. It’s a technique that has served her well on her best known songs like “Hey Jupiter” and “Jackie’s Strength.” Here, it comes early on in the form of the heavy-duty ballad “Wild Way,” a song that is, without a doubt, the highlight of Geraldines. Never bordering on unhinged the way “Hey Jupiter” did less than twenty years ago, “Wild Way” is never the less heartbreaking and desperate, despite how reserved it is in execution.

In her previous efforts, Amos’ eclecticism played in her favor. Unfortunately, here, that is not exactly the case, as the style-hopping isn’t as successful, making a rather unevenly paced album. It’s front-loaded with slightly more fully developed sounding songs (i.e. a full band being involved) and the back end slows down with a long string of stripped down, piano-only ballads. There is also little cohesion in the songs that feature more in the way of arrangements—like the faux-industrial vibes on the incredibly self-aware “16 Shades of Blue,” and the straight-up “middle of the road” Adult Contemporary shuffling with the double-shots of “America” and “Trouble’s Lament.”

In the Wikipedia for this record, it mentions Amos not wanting to make something “shocking” since that is “too easy” (her words, not mine) but instead, wanted to make something that was resonated in the now, and had been inspired in part by her daughter. It also claims that the record is also can be described as “an appreciative portrayal of (Amos’) experiences with visual art.”

If you had not cheated and read that online, I’m not sure if it’s something that is easy to pick up on. Or maybe you are supposed to glean that from the cover art, where Amos is on some straight up #coolmom flow with her denim shirt and paintbrush.

In the end, Unrepentant Geraldines is never unlistenable, but it’s also not exactly a memorable album. There are moments when it works—the slightly mystic “Selkie,” and the touching duet with her teenage daughter on “Promise” are both easily high points. But overall, it’s the kind of record that is just failing to connect (with me.) 

Unrepentant Geraldines is out on Tuesday via Mercury Classics.