Product Description

America's idiosyncratic queen of grown-up pop follows up 2005's 'The Beekeeper' with an album that is being hailed as areturn to the dark, harrowing feel of her early 90s work. Performed by a "posse" of five unique characters, all played by Amos and representing different facets of her personality, the album's subject matter flits from the outspokenly political to the deeply personal. Produced by Amos herself and recorded at Martian Engineering in Cornwall, it includes the single 'Big Wheel'.

Track Listing

1. Yo George
2. Big Wheel
3. Bouncing Off Clouds
4. Teenage Hustling
5. Digital Ghost
6. You Can Bring Your Dog
7. Mr Bad Man
8. Fat Slut
9. Girl Disappearing
10. Secret Spell
11. Devils And Gods
12. Body And Soul
13. Father's Son
14. Programmable Soda
15. Code Red
16. Roosterspur Bridge
17. Beauty Of Speed
18. Almost Rosey
19. Velvet Revolution
20. Dark Side Of The Sun
21. Posse Bonus
22. Smokey Joe
23. Dragon

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5833 in Music
• Released on: 2007-04-30
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
In an era of digital downloads and singles, Tori Amos embraces the concept album in a sprawling 23-song oratorio. Firing across the American psychological, social, and political landscape, she takes on the state of the world, war, and feminism. To help her, she adopts five personas--her American Doll Posse--who take their characteristics from Greek gods, but not their names: Clyde, Pip, Isabel, Santa, and Tori. You need a scorecard to keep track, but don't worry. It's still Tori Amos, bending syllables in improbable pretzels with rippling piano themes and choruses that threaten to go Broadway at any moment. Amos vents her political spleen through "Isabel," leaving no doubt as to her targets on tracks like "Yo George," and comments on our impersonal age and computer addiction with "Digital Ghost." That's sung by the character "Tori," who is reputedly based on Demeter and Dionysus, representing the split between Amos's earth-mother side and her wilder, more libertine tendencies. Anti-war and pro-feminist themes are plastered across American Doll Posse like sloganeering posters. "Dark Side of the Sun" laments both sides of the war, including the Islamic extremists who lay down their lives "for some sick promise of heaven." Amos adopts a big '80s rock sound on many tracks, with guitarist Mac Aladdin pealing off Brian May-style guitar licks over an arena-rock beat. It's where Amos details a more personal sound that American Doll Posse leaves a lasting impression. "Girl Disappearing," sung by "Clyde," holds echoes of the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby," not only because of the string quartet and nostalgic tone, but the updated tale of a woman losing herself. "Smokey Joe" brims with dark atmospheres, Robert Fripp-like guitar sustains, and Amos's most elaborate vocal arrangements, interweaving two sets of lyrics for "Pip." More than a concept album, American Doll Posse is a convergence experience, mixing online blogs from each character, videos, MySpace sites, and more. --John Diliberto

Customer Reviews

Enough is enough
I have been a huge Tori fan since seeing her in a small club at the time of the first album. I bought all the albums and rarities and collected the bootlegs, so I am not a casual fan and I do know what I am talking about.
Tori has been going off the boil since "Boys for Pele". The next few albums always had a few saving graces, but "Scarlett's walk" had half a dozen decent tracks on an intolerably long cd and "The Beekeper" had maybe 2 or 3 decent tunes.
"American doll Posse" has no tunes at all and its 23 tracks long. It is boring, laughably self indulgent and there is not be a single track that would be fit to sit alongside her early B-Sides.
I know Tori obsessives will cry treason, but wake up to the facts people. She has blown her talent, and I am really sad.

Five Into One Will Go
Ms Amos has always had the 'Marmite' factor.

Love her or hate her she has been an unignorable
part of the musical firmament since her 1992
debut 'Little Earthquakes'.

Even her fans cannot sometimes agree.

Mr Mukasa for instance in his recent review holds
her 2005 release 'The Beekeeper' to be "rather awful".

I would not wish his abrupt and unqualified dismissal
to deter you from exploring that extraordinarily beautiful
album which, in my own humble view, contains some of her
very best compositions.

Our subjectivity is, of course, none-the-less sacrosanct.

...and so to 'American Doll Posse'.

Ms Amos' capacity for strangeness is well known.
It is one of the qualities which most endears her to us.

At any time the world she creates might dissolve, explode, fragment,
fall apart. That sense of danger is ever present. Don't expect
designer handbags and micro-dogs from this good lady.

In one way this new album represents exceedingly good value.
Five Toris for the price of one !

Tori, Pip, Clyde, Isabel, Santa. Amoebic self-division.

Conjuring these disparate personae into being has given her
the unique opportunity to write from multiple perspectives/positions.

That the album retains coherance is a testament to
her capacity to keep the whole concept under control.

From the violence of Pip's 'Teenage Hustling' and 'Fat Slut';
through Clyde's ethereal 'Bouncing Off Clouds', 'Girl Disappearing'
and the sublime 'Roosterspur Bridge', to Isabel's barbed 'Yo George'
and the beautifully calamitous anthem 'Almost Rosey' ( perhaps one
of the most affecting songs in her canon ); this is a complex and
richly varied journey through the musical imagination of a woman
operating at the absolute height of her creative powers.

Ms Amos' voice and pianistic skills are, as ever, peerless.

Musicianship and production values are superb throughout.

Mr Shenale's string and brass arrangements deserve mention in their own right.

A Wild, Weird and Wonderful Achievement.

A welcome improvement
After the rather awful (And I love Tori) 'The Beekeeper' I am pleased to see the cornflake girl return to form. There are some great tunes here, but there are also quite a few ordinary ones that should have been left out. I would have preferred a shorter album with quality songs.