Tori Amos
Her music is about the space hanging between the notes she plays or sings. Mostly, the notes allow you to fall between them until the next one rolls out to the rescue. There's pathos, too—probably more than most music consumers care to swallow. Yet, this incomparable songwriter, with her deft piano playing and compelling voice, performs songs that make you feel.
Following 1992's impressive debut album, Little Earthquakes, Amos, with her sophomore effort, plunges fearlessly into such weighty topics as sexual guilt, anger and religious confusion—territory from which she seems to emerge healed and healthy.
This is certainly the case with "God," the album's first single and one of her more wickedly delightful songs yet. "God sometimes you just don't come through/Do you need a woman to look after you?" she asks. By questioning patriarchal power, she's written the perfect female bookend to Randy Newman's equally sardonic "God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)."
Elsewhere, "The Waitress" unfolds like many of her songs—small and quiet one minute, tough and abrasive the next. Throughout, Amos's lush melodies and elaborate arrangements grow stronger with each listening. (Atlantic)
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