Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Just 18 months after releasing her debut album Little Earthquakes, Tori Amos stamped her authority on her music direction by releasing the superb Under The Pink.  Gone were the days Y Kant Tori Read forever, this was 100 per cent what the talented musician was all about, trailblazing, confessional, confrontational but with that alluring feminine smile paving the way before slamming the piano with full heart and lyrics that were designed to make you thing as well as enjoy. The musical personification of poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton but with even bigger welcoming attitude and an allure that got beneath the skin of the subject she wrote about.

If Little Earthquakes was the laying of an unshakeable foundation, lessons learned from the 1980s attempt at getting across a message, then Under The Pink was the grand opening of a house that kept being added to over the years.

Everything was as it had been 18 months earlier, the distinctive piano, the smart and intelligent lyrics that at times was introspective, deep and thoughtful, a brooding question that hung on her lips which she carefully answered with guile and reflective fortitude. It also had the scattered jokes, the fabulous word play and sensational imagery woven throughout that was seen In Little Earthquakes. Although the album moved away from the great rock elements that made Little Earthquakes such an invaluable addition to anyone’s collection, it nevertheless was the perfect addition, a great step forward. In the end that step forward she took on Under The Pink was something that can be heard throughout her studio career, never keeping still, never resting on the laurels of victories won, just good old fashioned graft and never settling in the belief that what she has created was perfect. It was a refreshing change from the 1980s in which the same act played the same type of tune to death.

This great maturity of song writing is typified in songs such as The Waitress, the stunning Cornflake Girl, the haunting Past The Mission and The Wrong Band, the latter especially as it is noted that Ms. Amos herself has regretted putting the song on the album instead of the intended track Honey. The Wrong Band though plays with voices, something that would characterise the tremendous album American Doll Posse later in her career. Voices sung through one person, the idea of other personalities trying to bleed through, a story teller’s art captured and framed with the assistance of music, in itself a distinct personality.

The Wrong Band has the feel of admission, a confused declaration of being in amongst the wrong set of people for far too long but not being able to pull away from them because your life is too entwined into theirs. This disclosure is heard by those around the narrator of the song, the friends in which confess through Ms. Amos that the wrong band, the sounds of the musicians they are hearing on stage is perhaps not what they expected to hear at all. It may have started off fun but slowly the sinking, drowning feeling is becoming too much to bear.

Arguably the finest track on the album is Cornflake Girl. The song is also perhaps the closest spiritually to anything on Little Earthquakes, a natural successor to songs such as Crucify and Leather and a great forerunner to tracks such as Almost Rosey, A Sorta Fairytale and Mrs. Jesus. The wonderful almost happy like state of affairs supplied by Paulinho Da Costa, hides the grandness of the piano to come. The feel of the familiar way of starting a day, bright, a smile on your face after being rested only to realise that the day ahead brings more misery than you want, the torrential downpour on a day which promised to be beautiful. The realisation that despite what you know to be true, again you are hanging with a crowd that is not of your making, the sense of isolation within a pack mentality permeates and soaks through the lyrics. The opening line speaks of rejection of conformity, of knowing that despite it being a safe easy option to fit, ‘the cornflake’, always a popular option, is after all mass produced, boxed, packaged, designed to fit in with a certain lifestyle and has no sense of the exotic that a raisin can bring to the table. The raisin, whilst being the dried up aftermath of the grape, has the ability to be used in something other than what it first appears. It though also has to be cultivated, processed and eventually a type of conformity will make it what it appears, something to be consumed.

In typical Tori Amos style, the humour bleeds through and the raisin could also be seen as mentioning raisin’ hell, the girls that like to party, to be different, not packaged on a shelf for somebody else consumption. It is the sense of independence that typifies Tori Amos outstanding career, independent, totally in control of her own destiny and a trail blazer for the abundance of female performers that have come after her.

Under The Pink was a huge success for Ms. Amos, it captivated those that had bought into her ideology and look at the world, certainly as a feminist icon, from her debut Little Earthquakes and looked to make sure that she had a huge career infront of her. An incredible album, one of a type of musical warmth that comes with confessional poetry, some parts may make hard reading but you keep looking and the more you look the more you find, just like the musical soul that inhabits the graciousness of piano playing that Tori Amos supplies in Under The Pink.

Ian D. Hall