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Tori Amos | Strange Little Girls

The kooky redhead gives us the aptly-titled covers album 'Strange Little Girls'.
CD, Atlantic/Warner

Tekst: Nathalie Claeys

Publicatiedatum: 08 oktober 2001

"It's the beginning of the New Age." Hardly. Tori Amos is an update of the 70s singer-songwriter. Kate Bush's angelic looks. Lyrics straight out of the Patti Smith confession stand. Add a bit of Joni Mitchell's 'Blue' ingredient to obtain the contemporary version. By letting the listener take a peek into her mind and soul, she won the hearts of a million grrls a mere decade ago. In a way, she was the soft-spoken alter ego of Nirvana. Although her lyrics were sung by a properly-trained voice instead of a hoarse wail, the emotions dripped off the record nonetheless. 'Strange Little Girls' is a continuum of her previous records. She is still impersonating a million different personas. This time she decided to let the man speak through her. By picking twelve songs all written by males, she wants to say something. Only the message is lost by a selection of mostly uninteresting material and a rather bland sound. The concept is there, only the execution is ineffective. Why pick 'I Don't Like Mondays' by the Boomtown Rats, when there's Led Zeppelin? Couldn't she have picked a song off 'Songs About Fucking' instead of 'Rattlesnakes'? Nonetheless, '97 Bonnie & Clyde', originally by Eminem, is the sonic equivalent of 'The Shining', haunting you till the very last second. 'Heart of Gold', with stretched-out guitars and multi-layered vocals, is one of the outstanding tracks on the record. Two songs which display that it could have worked. What 'Strange Little Girls' lacks most is a call and response. Liz Phair managed to do this in 1993 with 'Exile in Guyville'. But Tori Amos' inner voice remains silent. The woman just re-iterates the words dictated by the male hormones. Call it sonic method acting if you want, but even Robert De Niro sometimes fails to make the character come to life. So when Tori sings 'Rattlesnakes' or 'I'm Not in Love', it sounds dreamy and soft. 'I Don't Like Mondays' is of the same mold. It will merely come across as a deja vu - or deja entendu, if you will - but it remains inoffensive. Why pick a song which every member of the working class - male and female - can relate to? Ultimately, you feel as if Tori is just going through the motions. The root of the problem is very simple of course. Singer-songwriters tend to strip down their sound and focus on the lyrics. This works best when it is (apparently) confessional and lets the listener participate in the process. By covering classics written by men, it is blatantly obvious the song doesn't come from the heart. So who can identify with this sexually mixed bag of songs and singer?

http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/tori-amos/strange-little-girls/933/
Meer Tori Amos op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/tori-amos