Friday, December 11th, 2009

The Eleventh Day of Mellowmas: Torimas

by Jeff Giles and Jason Hare

Jason: Ah, so here we are. Tori Amos.

Jeff: I know you’ve been waiting for this day for some time.

Jason: Well, Kelly Stitzel, who is a Tori fan, warned us about this album. Or I guess I should say “who was a Tori fan.”

Jeff: Who could have guessed we’d get holiday albums from Dylan AND Tori Amos in the same year?

Jason: Oh, we haven’t even gotten to Dylan yet, my friend. After today’s track, we may not make it another day. This is supposedly the album that has even her diehard fans throwing in the towel.

Jeff: I have never liked a single Tori Amos song, so I’m looking forward to this.

Jason: I have a version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” that is absolutely beautiful until she starts singing. She does all these weird chord changes and they sound really, really good, actually…and then her voice.

Jeff: I find her constant strangeness pretentious.

Jason: And this album cover is doing her absolutely no favors.

Jeff: Also, I blame her for Joanna Newsom.

Jason: Don’t even get me started on Joanna Newsom. Let’s just listen to the track.

Jeff: Okay. Now I’m wondering what a Joanna Newsom Christmas album would sound like, so anything that distracts me from that has to be better.

Jason: Let’s listen to “Holly, Ivy and Rose,” aka “The names of the three fans I have left.”

Tori Amos — Holly, Ivy and Rose (download)

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From Midwinter Graces null

Jeff: Already, I’m transfixed by the album cover.

Jason: I think she just said “Lo, how a rose ere blooming,” but I can’t understand everything she said for sure.

Jeff: I was just about to ask you if she was speaking English. Isn’t this the language Jodie Foster used in Nell?

Jason: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Okay, that was someone else singing, right? In the “chorus”?

Jeff: I was just going to ask you that!

Jason: It’s a kid or something. That poor child.
Oh, now we’re in India.
…and the kid is back.

Jeff: Nothing about this feels the least bit like the holidays.

Jason: Yeah, the whole album is kind of like that. All the songs sound vaguely reminiscent of Christmas carols, and then she Tori-fies them. Jesus, there’s still a minute left.

Jeff: And I still don’t have any clue what’s going on. This is apparently a traditional song.

Jason: It is?

Jeff: Which makes Tori Amos as much of a dick as Sting.

Jason: They should have released an album together. They could have duetted on all these stupidly inaccessible songs. And then we’d have approximately 50% less tracks.

Jeff: Hey, guess what? “Midwinter Graces began as a suggestion by Doug Morris, chairman and chief executive officer of Universal Music Group.”

Jason: You’re kidding me.

Jeff: Nope. “I’ve been writing it since I was a little girl,” exclaimed Amos during an interview with The Advocate in promotion for the album. “[A] little girl, in church.”

Jason: “Hey Tori, why don’t you release something that nobody will buy so I can drop you from the label?”

Jeff: That other singer is someone named Natashya Hawley. Whose parents were also clearly dicks.

Jason: Yeah, guess what? That’s her daughter.

Jeff: I was right!

Jason: Ha ha ha! You may not believe this, but there are other bad tracks on this album. I did listen to the whole thing, and I couldn’t find a song I liked.

Jeff: I listened to it too, but I thought Sting’s was far worse.

Jason: That’s true.

Jeff: I was expecting Tori to do her dolphin voice.

Jason: Their duet album could have been called The Dolphin and the Whale. Or Pretentious and Pretentiouser.

Jeff: & Oates.

Jason: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 7:30 am and is filed under Featured, Featured - Frontpage, Mellowmas, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • taracheree
    You guys are cruel. Maybe if you watched the dvd of Tori explaining why she sang these songs, then you'd have nothing witty to say. You are just 2 people, she has plenty of fans and yes, I bought this album and enjoyed it b/c it's not like your typical Christmas songs where someone just sings them a little differently. Try having an open mind.
  • If the songs were better, she wouldn't have to explain why she sang them.
  • ABCD
    "If the songs were better, she wouldn't have to explain why she sang them" what logic are you going by exactly? do you honestly think this comment makes any sense or was it just your attempt at being witty?

    It's sad that we're so ready to roast artists before at least trying to understand the messages they're trying to deliver.
    If anyone here had been open-minded enough to let petty things (like the way she pronounces some words) pass. You would've gotten a real treat out of some of the songs.

    But sadly, history always repeats itself. Such artists are recognized only after they die. We're so irrationally resistant to anything different.

    Maybe you guys can wait for Gaga's christmas album. After all, she can play chords on the piano!
  • This isn't Enya?
  • Can't decide about the cover--either a witch giving notice that she's about to destroy the world, or an homage to "The Lovely Bones."
  • I like that stars realized they can't make a good Christmas album. Why did they then choose to make a not-good not-Christmas album?
  • Two confessions: I used to be a Tori fan when I was much, MUCH younger; and I feel oddly compelled to listen to every single Mellowmas track all the way through, no matter how much pain it causes me. The first minute and a half of this song embody everything I grew to despise about Tori and her overly mannered vocals, but when it gets to the "Holly and the Ivy" section I honestly think it's pretty decent. Unfortunately, at 3:30, the "rose e'er blooh-ooh-oohming" kicks in again.

    I hope that if her daughter plans to become a singer, she looks outside the family for a role model.
  • As I was assembling the last Name That Tune, I went looking for my copy of Into the Pink so I could add "Cornflake Girl," only to realize that I sold it years ago. I remember feeling a twang of regret for letting it go.

    Not anymore.
  • Cooler ThanYou
    'Cuz nothing says "funny" like two hipster douchebags bagging on somebody's music, complete with "hahahahaha" transcripts.
  • Ha! Nobody's cooler than me! No, wait, everybody's cooler than me.

    As you were.
  • MichaelFortes
    Seriously now! Jeff and Jason are so un-hip, they make hipsters feel self conscious and afraid to open their mouths.
  • Now I defended Tori here, but you're clearly new to this site if you think Jason and Jeff and "hipster douchebags." For one thing, they're not hip.
  • JonCummings
    And I understand that they don't douche, they swab, but that's just a rumor.

    If you're gonna come onto a Mellowmas post, call yourself "Cooler Than You," and then pretend that Jeff & Jason aren't at least kinda funny with this stuff, you're in for one unhappy holiday.

    (Though I have to say, I like the daughter's vocals, and the song actually picks up nicely once the Big Strings kick in. The gibberish I could definitely live without, however, and that album cover would make a lovely ornament -- for Halloween. Why do you want to scare the children at Christmas, Tori?)
  • Matt Mathai
    WTF? Does Tori Amos speak English? I love when singers express individuality, but I think a minimum requirement should be that they be intelligible.

    She sounds like she's channeling Jodie Foster in Nell, filtered through some Kate Bush caterwauling.

    Merry Christmas, indeed.
  • If singers were required to be intelligible, wouldn't that have deprived the world of Liz Fraser of the Cocteau Twins? Or Kurt Cobain?
  • Let's all sing Radio Free Europe! Ready ...?

    "My sahs ih framy radian in mistake
    Reason it could polish it to wah
    Push it, push it, push it, peapod snore
    That this isn't country at all

    Fraaaaayyy meeeee staaaaa tionnnnn
    It's oonnnnn youuuurrrrrr piiiiii-iiiissssss

    Callin all innih transit
    callin on intranshit
    Radio Free Europe
    (hey that's the name of the song!)
  • Or Joe Cocker!
  • Matt
    Joe Cocker? You take that back!
  • Cocker? I don't even know her!
  • Bless you.
  • Marie
    Actually, i don't mind this song at all. I work in a day care center, and I have heard Christmas carols since the day after thanksgiving, so something that DOESN'T sound like those is making me happy. But I'm also an old Tori fan...
  • WHERE THE FUCK IS THE CHRISTMAS IN THIS SONG?!
  • Hiding, like a frightened child, behind the sofa.
  • I like this. But I like a lot of Tori's back catalog, especially when the lyrics aren't so far out there Kristin Hersh would say "Whoa."

    When it comes to covers, you have to give Tori credit for bringing Joe Jackson's "Real Men" to a slightly wider audience, too.
  • KellyStitzel
    I told you guys this album was awful. I think I've only listened to it once, and I haven't even bothered to listen to the bonus tracks. The thing is, a lot of the arrangements are really beautiful, particularly the strings. It's just the lyrics on the original songs (and the "alterations" she's made to the classic carols) and her enunciation that kills it for me.

    For the record, I love her version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." This album would've been far better if the songs were more in that vein instead of what she ended up releasing.
  • ...there are bonus tracks? Oof.
  • KellyStitzel
    Oh, and I guess there's another bonus track, "Comfort and Joy." It's another with her and the piano. It's an original that takes part of its chorus from "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." It gets on my nerves like the rest of the album.
  • KellyStitzel
    The bonus tracks are "Good King Wenceslas" and "Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht (Silent Night, Holy Night)." I just listened to them both and, actually, I like them better than pretty much anything on the rest of the record. "Silent Night" is sung in English (thank goodness) and is not Tori-fied at all -- just her and the piano and very traditional. Same with "Good King Wenceslas." If she'd done the whole record like these, I might actually enjoy it.

    Oh, old-school Tori. I miss you.
  • "Now that we've set you on fire, it's time to piss out the ashes! Wheee!"
  • I made it approximately 45 seconds into the song before shutting it off. My wife, from across the room, said her ears were bleeding. This could be the worst one tune yet.
  • TWO MORE WEEKS TO GO!
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