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~~MicShazam~~ · 10-12-2017, 06:04 PM

I've been chewing on this album for a while now and thought I'd try my hand at some sort of review. I honestly feel like writing reviews is very difficult and I'm not exactly confident in my own reviewing abilities. I don't even have a feeling for what basic approach works best for me, despite the fact that I once had a music blog where I wrote quite a number of reviews and got a fair number of page visits over a few years. I stopped writing since I didn't really think my own writing was any good whenever I went back to my old pieces and read them again.

I'm not sure how I'm going to do this one. Trying to be honest and straight forward is probably a good starting point. I guess I'm just going to sort of start writing and see what happens.

Tori Amos - Native Invader(2017)

Released: September 8, 2017*
Country: USA
Genre: Contemporary singer/songwriter, adult contemporary, alternative.
Chronology: This is her 15th studio record, counting cover albums, re-recordings and the studio recording of her musical The Light Princess.

Preamble/ramble:

My own history with Tori Amos goes back quite a while and it all began with Metallica. Back in the day, I mostly listened to metal. I found out via MTV that Metallica had put out a non-album track, I Disappear, through the Missions Impossible 2 soundtrack and I had to have it. I listened to the disc a lot back then while designing levels for a terrible old DOS game called Witchaven 2. The two are permanently bound together in my mind. Most of the album was some, in hindsight, not very good alternative rock, post grunge and nu-metal. A few tracks stood out though, not least a deep-cut by Tori Amos; the non-album track Carnival. I was completely taken with the track and would often skip past other tracks I liked to get to it faster. Why I didn't actually try to find any albums with Tori back then will always be a mystery to me. Perhaps because there weren't a lot of options. Few local record stores, none of which had any of her albums. I mostly bought metal albums back then anyway. It was basically all about thrash, NWOBHM, No Doubt, Depeche Mode and Kylie Minogue for me.

It wasn't until 2009 I really started exploring music via the internet and try actively to expand my horizons. If I seem like kind of a musical pleb at times, keep in mind that I'm a 36 year old that have only spent the last 8 years or so really going in depth with music.

Tori Amos was the first target. I got the album American Doll Posse and was soon completely sold. I've been a big fan ever since and in a way, most music I've discovered since has come from attempts at finding something equally melodically, emotionally and harmonically involved as I find her music to be. Much has even come directly from in various ways looking for similar artists through allmusic.com and then simply following that trail deeper and deeper. If I seem to focus rather heavily on female solo artists, blame Tori's huge influence on my tastes as far as everything non-metal is concerned.

Her discography so far has, in my eyes, been a varied and interesting mountain to climb. I can't say there's been many letdowns for me and the peaks have been many. If I started listing off Tori Amos songs that I find among my favorite music of all time, I'd be here all day. I do feel like she's been releasing a very impressive string of albums since 2007 as I find most of her major releases between then and now to be excellent. As such, I expected quite a bit from Native Invader.

The actual review:

Native Invader is a farily straight forward album as such. It's a varied bunch of songs that stick pretty closely to the kind of thing most fans want from her. No classical detours in the vein of her 2011 album Night of Hunters. No messing around with holiday themes (Midwinter Graces (2009)), re-recordings of her older songs (Gold Dust (2012)) or audacious musical projects without much in the way of vocals from Tori Herself (The Light Princess (2013)) - just an album of "normal" songs.
As such, it's not really far from her 2014 album, Unrepentant Geraldines.
I do feel like it shares a certain sonic common ground with a couple older albums, namely 2002's Scarlet's Walk and 2005's The Beekeeper. Those two albums had a similar warm, adult contemporary/adult alternative feeling to the instrumentation and the arrangements in general. Later albums feel like they shop around quite a bit more stylistically, touching upon everything from blues to R&B, torch songs and folk music. Native Invader is still a musically varied project, but it stays more firmly within a singer/songwriter style, with said adult contemporary/adult alternative stylings as a sort of lens which informs the production on these tracks.

I think I will try to write something about each track on the album. That seems the best way to give a sense of what there is to gain from this listening experience.

1. Reindeer King
This is a chilling, ghostly, rolling piano ballad with booming low notes from Tori's Bösendorfer piano and startlingly powerful, reverbed vocals. This is definitely a highlight in Tori's sizeable discography, so we're off to a good start.

2. Wings
This track immediately recalls the production style of those early 2000's albums I mentioned earlier and the drum beat recalls adult alternative from that time period. This is where I see those not keen on Tori Amos already jumping ship, but stay with me and I might change you mind.
During the first chorus, some rather interesting details creep into the arrangement in the shape of a frail synth tone of sorts, doubling up the melody. Other details make themselves known in the background, including a subtle reverbed guitar and what sounds like steel drums. The collective effect is in my opinion a rather rich and evocative soundscape. Not least due to the dynamic way in which it ebbs, flows and changes shape depending on what part of the song we're in. Like most tracks on this album, this isn't exactly very immediate and catchy, but I find that to be a common trait of all her albums. They take a while to grow on me, but they always do.

3. Broken Arrow
We've got a wah-pedalled guitar, for what might just be the first time in Tori's entire discography. The radio friendly tone of the previous track remains and the spectre of the Scarlet's Walk album looms large over this one. I like it, but it just about represents everything that many hate about Tori's post 90's output. I like the use of a hammond organ, the subtly detailed, minimal bass and drum backing and said wah-pedal. It all comes together for a restrained, but rich arrangement. I love the subtly layered falsetto vocals in the chorus.

4. Cloud Riders
The guitars and organs sound great from the very beginning of this track. I love everything about the sombre vibe it gives off before the bridge and chorus. The song changes vibe to something more energetic, in more of a major key, then snaps right back via a vistful guitar progression with a very nice tone to it. I mentioned the organ already, but I really, really love how it subtly colors this song in the background.

5. Up The Creek
This is the one song that really deviates from how I described the musical contents of this album in the beginning. It's got an electronic beat and guest vocal's from Tori's daughter. It's got fake, keyboard played strings and some synth lines. There's some nice details in this arrangement too if you are patient and listen carefully. I love it when it explodes into a piano solo. This track took me a while to fully appreciate, but I feel like it's a success.

6. Breakaway
A low key piano ballad. I suppose this is the sort of thing a lot of Tori Amos fans are clamoring for her to go back to. It's a good song and her piano arrangements are always on point. There's a very evocative melodic piano theme and a sensitive, lamenting vocal melody - beautiful music all around, but I will say that I'm happy there's so much more to her that this sort of thing. One of my favorite things about her is her versatility as an artist.

7. Wildwood
Another track with beautiful guitar sound. I just love this song honestly. Tori's vocals are truly in chills-down-your-spine territory on this track. I like the use of hand drums along with a drum kit. Listen carefully and you will realize there's quite a few components to this arrangement. A great track that I'm looking forward to every time I listen to this album.

8. Chocolate Song
Ok so this one is admittedly a bit daft. The lyrics, at least. Musically, it's mostly just how it seems to shift between the chorus and the verse sort of jarringly that sets me off. Like with all the track on this album, there's some details to it if you pay attention. It's not bad, but clearly the low point of the album.

9. Bang
I'm not sure this is in 3/4, but it does seem to have that waltzing rhythm to it. There's a sort of ascending melodic arrangement to it that for much of the song is underscored closely by extended lead guitar notes. Some drum details help lend a somewhat portentous feel to this track. An interlude scales things back to something much quieter before the track builds even further in intensity. The guitar near the end almost sounds like something Brian May could have played.

10. Climb
This piano led song feels like it stylistically owes something to old, traditional American songs. The chorus feels more modern and ends rather beautifully. The arrangement is ever so slightly backed and expanded by subtle acoustic guitar and a tambourine. Definitely a track that took a while to grow on me, but I see great appeal in it now.

11. Bats
Strongly recalls Tori's early 2000's style. The hand drums, the guitar work, the tempo setting piano arrangement and smooth adult alternative feel all make me think of tracks from that time. I love how her vocal melody weaves itself around a repeating musical arrangement during the chorus.

12. Benjamin
Seems to be a song about corporate greed as far as I can tell. Some of the instrumentation curiously reminds me of old Kate Bush - way back around her first three records - and there's a key change late in the song that at first seemed jarring to me, but now seems exciting and clever. One of the things I love the most about Tori Amos is her abilities as a songwriter from a musical perspective. I'm always quite impressed by the fluidly structured songs that never fail to have multifaceted, fully developed melodies. There's a lot of evident thoughtfulness behind her songs and this song exhibits this quality very clearly. This being one of the main attractions of her music, it does admittedly mean that most of it is far from immediately catchy. It's less about isolated moments (hooks) and more about the development of melodies over time.

13. Mary's Eyes
Similarly to how the album started, we get another rolling piano ballad with very pretty, sombre vocals. I love how the feel of the melody changes quite a bit as we move from verse to bridge to chorus. In the background, I notice a few details that are unique to this track. This has been a theme of this album all the way through this album, then; that almost every track has some details/instrumenation mixed in that is unique compared to all the other tracks. This sonic diversity is a major strength of the album in my opinion.

I feel like Native Invader is a very, very strong album overall. It's 62 minutes long and quite a mouthful to find one's way through at first, but I feel like I'm getting a lot out of it now that I know it more in depth. It's always hard to place an album in a discography so large, but I feel like it surely must belong in the upper half of the Tori Amos discography. Maybe even close to the top. But I do not want to be to quick to say something like that, as I know from experience that keeping a full overview of this many long and detailed albums in your head at once is difficult. My feelings about her albums change as the wind blows, so all that I can say for sure is that I think Native Invader is very good and very interesting once you move below the surface of it.

9/10

*Since Trollheart hated the last Tori Amos album I saw him suffer through, I'm not sure it will go down well when Native Invader comes up in his 2017 albums review thread. It's very far down the list, but here's me hoping it gets a fair shake when time comes!

10-12-2017, 06:04 PM	#40 (permalink)
~~MicShazam~~ Account Disabled Join Date: Aug 2015 Location: Aalborg Posts: 7,636	I've been chewing on this album for a while now and thought I'd try my hand at some sort of review. I honestly feel like writing reviews is very difficult and I'm not exactly confident in my own reviewing abilities. I don't even have a feeling for what basic approach works best for me, despite the fact that I once had a music blog where I wrote quite a number of reviews and got a fair number of page visits over a few years. I stopped writing since I didn't really think my own writing was any good whenever I went back to my old pieces and read them again. I'm not sure how I'm going to do this one. Trying to be honest and straight forward is probably a good starting point. I guess I'm just going to sort of start writing and see what happens. Tori Amos - Native Invader(2017) Released: September 8, 2017* Country: USA Genre: Contemporary singer/songwriter, adult contemporary, alternative. Chronology: This is her 15th studio record, counting cover albums, re-recordings and the studio recording of her musical The Light Princess. Preamble/ramble: My own history with Tori Amos goes back quite a while and it all began with Metallica. Back in the day, I mostly listened to metal. I found out via MTV that Metallica had put out a non-album track, I Disappear, through the Missions Impossible 2 soundtrack and I had to have it. I listened to the disc a lot back then while designing levels for a terrible old DOS game called Witchaven 2. The two are permanently bound together in my mind. Most of the album was some, in hindsight, not very good alternative rock, post grunge and nu-metal. A few tracks stood out though, not least a deep-cut by Tori Amos; the non-album track Carnival. I was completely taken with the track and would often skip past other tracks I liked to get to it faster. Why I didn't actually try to find any albums with Tori back then will always be a mystery to me. Perhaps because there weren't a lot of options. Few local record stores, none of which had any of her albums. I mostly bought metal albums back then anyway. It was basically all about thrash, NWOBHM, No Doubt, Depeche Mode and Kylie Minogue for me. It wasn't until 2009 I really started exploring music via the internet and try actively to expand my horizons. If I seem like kind of a musical pleb at times, keep in mind that I'm a 36 year old that have only spent the last 8 years or so really going in depth with music. Tori Amos was the first target. I got the album American Doll Posse and was soon completely sold. I've been a big fan ever since and in a way, most music I've discovered since has come from attempts at finding something equally melodically, emotionally and harmonically involved as I find her music to be. Much has even come directly from in various ways looking for similar artists through allmusic.com and then simply following that trail deeper and deeper. If I seem to focus rather heavily on female solo artists, blame Tori's huge influence on my tastes as far as everything non-metal is concerned. Her discography so far has, in my eyes, been a varied and interesting mountain to climb. I can't say there's been many letdowns for me and the peaks have been many. If I started listing off Tori Amos songs that I find among my favorite music of all time, I'd be here all day. I do feel like she's been releasing a very impressive string of albums since 2007 as I find most of her major releases between then and now to be excellent. As such, I expected quite a bit from Native Invader. The actual review: Native Invader is a farily straight forward album as such. It's a varied bunch of songs that stick pretty closely to the kind of thing most fans want from her. No classical detours in the vein of her 2011 album Night of Hunters. No messing around with holiday themes (Midwinter Graces (2009)), re-recordings of her older songs (Gold Dust (2012)) or audacious musical projects without much in the way of vocals from Tori Herself (The Light Princess (2013)) - just an album of "normal" songs. As such, it's not really far from her 2014 album, Unrepentant Geraldines. I do feel like it shares a certain sonic common ground with a couple older albums, namely 2002's Scarlet's Walk and 2005's The Beekeeper. Those two albums had a similar warm, adult contemporary/adult alternative feeling to the instrumentation and the arrangements in general. Later albums feel like they shop around quite a bit more stylistically, touching upon everything from blues to R&B, torch songs and folk music. Native Invader is still a musically varied project, but it stays more firmly within a singer/songwriter style, with said adult contemporary/adult alternative stylings as a sort of lens which informs the production on these tracks. I think I will try to write something about each track on the album. That seems the best way to give a sense of what there is to gain from this listening experience. 1. Reindeer King This is a chilling, ghostly, rolling piano ballad with booming low notes from Tori's Bösendorfer piano and startlingly powerful, reverbed vocals. This is definitely a highlight in Tori's sizeable discography, so we're off to a good start. 2. Wings This track immediately recalls the production style of those early 2000's albums I mentioned earlier and the drum beat recalls adult alternative from that time period. This is where I see those not keen on Tori Amos already jumping ship, but stay with me and I might change you mind. During the first chorus, some rather interesting details creep into the arrangement in the shape of a frail synth tone of sorts, doubling up the melody. Other details make themselves known in the background, including a subtle reverbed guitar and what sounds like steel drums. The collective effect is in my opinion a rather rich and evocative soundscape. Not least due to the dynamic way in which it ebbs, flows and changes shape depending on what part of the song we're in. Like most tracks on this album, this isn't exactly very immediate and catchy, but I find that to be a common trait of all her albums. They take a while to grow on me, but they always do. 3. Broken Arrow We've got a wah-pedalled guitar, for what might just be the first time in Tori's entire discography. The radio friendly tone of the previous track remains and the spectre of the Scarlet's Walk album looms large over this one. I like it, but it just about represents everything that many hate about Tori's post 90's output. I like the use of a hammond organ, the subtly detailed, minimal bass and drum backing and said wah-pedal. It all comes together for a restrained, but rich arrangement. I love the subtly layered falsetto vocals in the chorus. 4. Cloud Riders The guitars and organs sound great from the very beginning of this track. I love everything about the sombre vibe it gives off before the bridge and chorus. The song changes vibe to something more energetic, in more of a major key, then snaps right back via a vistful guitar progression with a very nice tone to it. I mentioned the organ already, but I really, really love how it subtly colors this song in the background. 5. Up The Creek This is the one song that really deviates from how I described the musical contents of this album in the beginning. It's got an electronic beat and guest vocal's from Tori's daughter. It's got fake, keyboard played strings and some synth lines. There's some nice details in this arrangement too if you are patient and listen carefully. I love it when it explodes into a piano solo. This track took me a while to fully appreciate, but I feel like it's a success. 6. Breakaway A low key piano ballad. I suppose this is the sort of thing a lot of Tori Amos fans are clamoring for her to go back to. It's a good song and her piano arrangements are always on point. There's a very evocative melodic piano theme and a sensitive, lamenting vocal melody - beautiful music all around, but I will say that I'm happy there's so much more to her that this sort of thing. One of my favorite things about her is her versatility as an artist. 7. Wildwood Another track with beautiful guitar sound. I just love this song honestly. Tori's vocals are truly in chills-down-your-spine territory on this track. I like the use of hand drums along with a drum kit. Listen carefully and you will realize there's quite a few components to this arrangement. A great track that I'm looking forward to every time I listen to this album. 8. Chocolate Song Ok so this one is admittedly a bit daft. The lyrics, at least. Musically, it's mostly just how it seems to shift between the chorus and the verse sort of jarringly that sets me off. Like with all the track on this album, there's some details to it if you pay attention. It's not bad, but clearly the low point of the album. 9. Bang I'm not sure this is in 3/4, but it does seem to have that waltzing rhythm to it. There's a sort of ascending melodic arrangement to it that for much of the song is underscored closely by extended lead guitar notes. Some drum details help lend a somewhat portentous feel to this track. An interlude scales things back to something much quieter before the track builds even further in intensity. The guitar near the end almost sounds like something Brian May could have played. 10. Climb This piano led song feels like it stylistically owes something to old, traditional American songs. The chorus feels more modern and ends rather beautifully. The arrangement is ever so slightly backed and expanded by subtle acoustic guitar and a tambourine. Definitely a track that took a while to grow on me, but I see great appeal in it now. 11. Bats Strongly recalls Tori's early 2000's style. The hand drums, the guitar work, the tempo setting piano arrangement and smooth adult alternative feel all make me think of tracks from that time. I love how her vocal melody weaves itself around a repeating musical arrangement during the chorus. 12. Benjamin Seems to be a song about corporate greed as far as I can tell. Some of the instrumentation curiously reminds me of old Kate Bush - way back around her first three records - and there's a key change late in the song that at first seemed jarring to me, but now seems exciting and clever. One of the things I love the most about Tori Amos is her abilities as a songwriter from a musical perspective. I'm always quite impressed by the fluidly structured songs that never fail to have multifaceted, fully developed melodies. There's a lot of evident thoughtfulness behind her songs and this song exhibits this quality very clearly. This being one of the main attractions of her music, it does admittedly mean that most of it is far from immediately catchy. It's less about isolated moments (hooks) and more about the development of melodies over time. 13. Mary's Eyes Similarly to how the album started, we get another rolling piano ballad with very pretty, sombre vocals. I love how the feel of the melody changes quite a bit as we move from verse to bridge to chorus. In the background, I notice a few details that are unique to this track. This has been a theme of this album all the way through this album, then; that almost every track has some details/instrumenation mixed in that is unique compared to all the other tracks. This sonic diversity is a major strength of the album in my opinion. I feel like Native Invader is a very, very strong album overall. It's 62 minutes long and quite a mouthful to find one's way through at first, but I feel like I'm getting a lot out of it now that I know it more in depth. It's always hard to place an album in a discography so large, but I feel like it surely must belong in the upper half of the Tori Amos discography. Maybe even close to the top. But I do not want to be to quick to say something like that, as I know from experience that keeping a full overview of this many long and detailed albums in your head at once is difficult. My feelings about her albums change as the wind blows, so all that I can say for sure is that I think Native Invader is very good and very interesting once you move below the surface of it. 9/10 Since Trollheart hated the last Tori Amos album I saw him suffer through, I'm not sure it will go down well when Native Invader* comes up in his 2017 albums review thread. It's very far down the list, but here's me hoping it gets a fair shake when time comes! Last edited by MicShazam; 10-12-2017 at 07:22 PM.