Review by Josh Carter
4 stars out of 4
Many things describe Tori Amos: talented, original, eccentric, unpredictable.
And she hasn't let us down with her fifth LP, 'to venus and back.' 'Venus'
is a weird little double album, the first disc, 'orbiting,' a studio disc,
and the second, 'still orbiting', being a live disc from her Plugged '98
Tour. And it's Amos' best work to date. The lead single 'Bliss' has Amos'
trademark undecipherable wordplay - "father/i've killed my monkey/i let
it out to taste the sweet of spring." Huh? It gets even better with
'Concertina': "i got my fuzz all tipped to play/i got a dub on your
landscape/then there's your policy of trancing the sauce without the
blame." But all the songs on 'Venus' are very good, especially 'Josephine',
and ode to Empiress Josephine, and 'Riot Proof', a song Amos wrote about
a crew member who came out, and this song probably has the best lyric
of hers to date, and most simple: "it will all find it's way in time."
'Datura' seems to be about Adam and Eve getting kicked out
of the Garden of Eden ("get out of my garden"), but with Amos, one can
never tell. 'Still Orbiting', the second disc, is even better. We start
off with 'Precious Things,' a seven and a half minute whirlwind of, well,
fury and feminism, and she delivers a ball-grabbing line here: "so you
can make me cum/that doesn't make you Jesus." But the real showstopper
here is 'Cornkflake Girl.' All in all, there's something here for everybody,
and Amos proves something yet again that we've known all along: Amos is
a master of her craft.
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