Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating *****
In 1992 an album was released by the name of Little Earthquakes and the impression it made on those who heard it turned the composer of the delicate and angst ridden tunes into at first a cult hero and then over the ensuing 20 years has turned her into an absolute legend. Tori Amos doesn’t sit still, not at her beloved piano and more importantly not in her life. Just a little over a year since she released her first foray into classical music, she has come out all guns blazing with the breathtaking Gold Dust.
Gold Dust combines all the best of Tori Amos’ distinguished career and gives them a new lease on life that wasn’t exactly needed but the result is an incredible and passionate album full of songs that you will know but somehow will the listener revelling in them as if they were the first time they had ever been heard.
The album will have its detractors of that you can lay money on it; some may even call it a self- indulgent retrospective or other non deserving platitudes; however the album will speak for itself in terms of its beauty and fresh idealism that it brings out in Tori’s music.
Gold Dust makes use of the world renowned Metropole Orchestra and on the 14 songs that have been re-worked, re-assembled and re-thought, each new segment, each adaptation of the time honoured strings that have littered and taken root in her albums, has taken on a new life. This new state may upset the purists who prefer to see songs always kept in their original format, never growing or expressing their depth but some songs and artists are not really meant to be kept in a stringent and uncomfortable bind, they need to be expressed and expressive.
From the moment the song Flavour kicks in to the last demanding notes of Girl Disappearing, the exquisite, the sheer overall brilliance of the music flows like a grand river, unimpeded and rapid. No where does this reimaging of some of the more expressive and personal songs of Tori’s music show more than on tunes such as the bitterness of Silent All These Years, the charm of Star of Wonder or the precociousness of Precious Things.
It’s hard to imagine what would have happened to Tori’s career had she been able to record the songs in this particular way in the last 20 years. Perhaps the world of music would have been a different place and for her legion of fans, a much less defined position but for Tori perhaps it would have cemented her position as the leading woman musician of her time.
All you need to know is it is brilliant, an album of excellence.
Ian D. Hall