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   Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Sep-2023 04:15:23 JST Paul Cantrell

   I just listened to Tori Amos’s “To Venus and Back” (the studio part, disc 1) in its entirety for the first time in a while, and…I still love that album. Lush, strange, and beautiful fever dreams from beginning to end. Gosh it has some nice sounds. I don’t know of any music that feels quite like it.

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Sep-2023 04:17:05 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     She’s such a strong songwriter and singer, seems like fans & critics latch on to that and gloss over her strength as a producer. She’s amazing at using the whole studio as an instrument, in the Jimi Hendrix tradition. People wanted her to be Joni Mitchell 2.0, and instead in the late 90s she went all Radiohead. This either confused people or pissed them off.

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Sep-2023 04:20:15 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     Little Earthquakes is a masterpiece in such a different vein, I guess it was hard for people not to listen to everything she did afterwards with that in their ears? But tbh I don’t like the way that album is produced. Amazing songs. But production? They took her raw, singular voice and put it in a very conventional box.

     When she started self-producing, her sound got a •lot• weirder, in all the best ways. Those first two albums, I love the songs. But it’s the later ones where I love the sounds.

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 22-Sep-2023 10:46:25 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Dan Drake 🦆

     @ddrake
     Agreed, Choirgirl and Venus are two of my favorite albums ever. And yeah, none of the later albums have really grabbed me as albums — though there are still some tracks that have grabbed me.

     I didn’t know about the Eminem cover! I’ll trade you one, ICYMI: Zero Point is a track made during the Venus sessions that was just too long to fit on the album, and it’s worth checking out.

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     Dan Drake 🦆 (ddrake@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Friday, 22-Sep-2023 10:46:27 JST Dan Drake 🦆

     in reply to

     @inthehands I'll add that Tori's cover of Eminem's "'97 Bonnie & Clyde" is one of the most terrifying and stunning covers I've ever heard. It's hair-raising when you listen to that and realize she's re-done the song *from the perspective of the murdered woman*. I think the cover version is so amazing that she effectively wrests ownership of the song from Eminem.

     (A similar wresting of ownership: Johnny Cash's cover of the Nine Inch Nails "Hurt".)

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     Dan Drake 🦆 (ddrake@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Friday, 22-Sep-2023 10:46:29 JST Dan Drake 🦆

     in reply to

     @inthehands oh man, thank you for reminding me of that album.

     Your comment about Joni Mitchell and Radiohead is spot-on. I love Little Earthquakes and Under the Pink, but I also like Choirgirl Hotel and To Venus and Back. Oh, and Strange Little Girls. I admit after that, it just doesn't do it for me.