Tori Amos - Abnormally Attracted to Sin

Tori Amos needs no introduction, her latest album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, out now on Universal Repblic Records on May 18^th. I was originally offered to listen to the album via a software called Play MPE, which I had absolutely no interest in installing. Maybe it's not true, but my perception of these installation is that they track everything you do through their music: what tracks you listen to, how many times you listen to it, when you fast-forward it, (the same sort of thing is done via lastfm). Anyway, it was just easier to just go and pick up the album at the store. Luckily, Target carried the deluxe edition.

So, before we get to Abnormally Attracted to Sin, I should tell you how Tori came into my life. In the early 90s, I remember VH-1 and MTV both playing Tori Amos, particularly "Silent All These Years". VH-1 was known primarily as more of an adult-contemporary (soft rock) to their more hip-new MTV, so Tori was pulling in both direction for me.

The interesting thing about "Silent All These Years" is that it was originally the b-side to "Me and A Gun" (the true single), but because of its potential suicidal implications, radio station only played the b-side. The song was eventually repackaged and endorsed by Tori Amo's creation: RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network)... although I have personally never associated the song to rape.

I do think it contain some of the best weird/funny lyrics: "so you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts, what's so amazing about really deep thoughts?" and "My dog won't bite if you sit real still, I got the Anti-Christ in the kitchen yelling at me again."

It wasn't until I heard the entire album that I had extra respect for Tori when I heard the line: "If you need me, me and Neil'll be hangin' out with the Dream King. Neil says Hi by the way. Remember, this was 1992, and hearing this and know this was a reference to Neil Gaiman and the Sandman was a bonding little secret shared only with other comic book and Tori Amos fans. Gaiman is now a respected and celebrated author, but he did start off writing comic books (alongside other wonderful UK talents like Peter Milligan, Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison, Alan Moore).

Anyway, back to the new album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin: she does another Neil song on "Not Dying Today":

Neil is thrilled he can claim he's a mammalian
"But the bad news," he said "Girl you're a dandelion."

I'm pretty sure that the whole song is about her hanging out with Neil Gaiman one Summer day.

If you're a Tori fan, you've already bought the album, so I'm not sure what else I can say about it to non-fans. It's pretty much what you would expect from a girl and her piano, but with a lot more synth and guitar.  If you've never liked Tori Amos, chances are, you're not going to like the new album.

While I liked songs like "500 Miles" (not a cover), "That Guy" (mostly for the pronunciation of "Neeew Yurk") and "Police Me", I feel these songs won't talk to the mainstream - instead I'm playing it safe with her lead-single "Welcome to England".

Apparently the single was available as a download last month, April 14^th, and a physical CD single was made available in the UK market on May 25^th. I know CD singles don't do well in the US, but if it was just available at stores, I wouldn't mind paying $3 for a single (especially because I want to hear the new B-Side "Oscar's Theme"). Unfortunately, buying an import single will set me back $10+, so it's not really worth it for a non-hardcore fan like myself for two songs.

Incidentally, have anyone noticed the 'sinful' photographs of Amos by Karen Collins? Do they look airbrushed ? Her face looks very symmetrical and her distinguishing cheekbones are barely noticeable. With her straight red hair, it just seems like she's a different woman on the cover of Abnormally Attracted to Sin.

If you get the deluxe package, it comes with a folded poster and a slightly oversized lyric booklet and a DVD. In addition, you are also given access to more content. Trying to access the extra content from Tori's Secret Site caused my computer to freeze the first time because of its use of Java. Am I the only person that actually really, really, hate java? It's painfully slow on my computer, it's always trying to update itself... I just hate java, as much as I hate real audio.

Upon ctrl-alt-deleting Firefox and reloading it, Tori's Secret Site keeps giving me this error: "Please insert your disc and click OK below".

Apparently, it doesn't seem to want to work with Firefox? When I finally launched IE8, it seems to work without any problems. The layout is fairly simple with "Download" on the bottom-left with mostly Quicktime videos for: "Maybe California", "That Guy" and "Not Dying". They also offered a free ringtone, which probably won't work with my phone, so I didn't bother with that.

Abnormally Attracted to Sin is out now, and you'll probably hear all about it when she does her massive world tour and heavy promotion for this album.