Archives for March 2009

Tori Amos is Abnormally Attracted To Sin on May 19

March 10, 2009 by krisis

Tori Amos gave a brief interview to Spinner about her impending disc, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, on the verge of her upcoming SXSW debut of new tunes next Thursday, March 19, at La Zona Rosa in Austin.

The article was accompanied by the debut of both cover art and a track-listing, both presumably presumably legit. (Incidentally, I am apparently physiologically obligated to type the title Abnormally ADDICTED to Sin at least once in each draft of a post about the disc).

Tori Amos - Abnormally Attracted to Sin

Sounds like Tori will be covering familiar ground, based on the following:

No, because I’m not torn by my religious beliefs. A lot of the problems we have right now in our world are because of intolerance dictated by the big religions.

We go back to that word — intolerance. That, to me, isn’t what America ever was. It wasn’t about telling another person how to live their life. I always said in a perfect world, you keep the Democrats out of your bank account and the Republicans out of your bedroom. But in life, why do you have to have anybody else in your bedroom if you’re a consenting adult?

And, she further recapitulated the current info on the “visualettes” accompanying the disc:

I’m calling them “vignettes” because it’s more akin to a mini-film. This all started on tour last time, when we were filming the live shows. The director was putting together montages, and as I saw the montages, new music was already coming. I started to put the new music to the mini-films that were being made out on the road.

Luckily, we were also supplied with a press release with some firmer details:

A DVD of corresponding ‘visualettes’ for each track will accompany the deluxe version of ABNORMALLY ATTRACTED TO SIN. These interlocking episodic films bring to life the narrative arc of the album. The footage was captured over the past year and shot with a noir twist in HD and Super 8.

Still no hints on the sound – could it be as glam as her rocking American Doll Posse? Or is the title – pulled from a Sarah Brown lyric in Guys and Dolls – indicative of a more minimal, classic, or even big-band sound?

Clues so far include the cover, featuring a lovely and quite-retro Tori, reclining. I’m a little dubious on the cover font – a sort of a decayed, condensed sans-serif – less about the period, more about Tori. The photo shows some regular markings on the bottom – sprockets on a negative?

Track list is even more oblique. If truth be told, I hope is fake. It’s already retreading plenty of past Tori topics with titles like “Police Me,” “Fast Horse,” and “Lady In Blue.”

Of course, who could have predicted “Teenage Hustling” and “You Can Bring Your Dog” would be two of my favorite tracks from her last disc?

1. Give
2. Welcome to England
3. Strong Black Vine
4. Flavor
5. Not Dying Today
6. Maybe California
7. Curtain Call
8. Fire to Your Plain
9. Police Me
10. That Guy
11. Abnormally Attracted to Sin
12. 500 Miles
13. Mary Jane
14. Starling
15. Fast Horse
16. Ophelia
17. Lady in Blue

There’s nothing there as zany as perennial fake-track titles like “Oranges And See It Crying,” which fans have been reading about for so long that they half-expect them to turn up as a B-side. The inclusion of “Ophelia” almost seems like a practical joke – yes, Tori, invoke more tragic woman! Better yet, perhaps “Mary Jane” is a crossover with the Bono/Edge Spider-Man musical?!

pipes and glass

March 9, 2009 by krisis

A long time ago I had a neighbor, freebasing cocaine at his kitchen table.

That came later, though.

Curled around my first guitar on the front step, maybe? Must’ve been. I don’t remember how else he knew I could play. I remember our porch, and his hammers on Ziggy. That’s exactly what I wanted.

We became a pair in his basement from time to time, him showing me barre chords, my explaining why you might retune.

I didn’t have that in my life at the time. I had Gina, still several months of skepticism about my guitar playing before she’d be of much help. No one else to take an interest. Certainly not an adult example.

(My mother’s boyfriend had played guitar, maybe, in the 70s? Some distantly removed time. He had sliced the tendon on his pointer, and could no longer play barres. Useless to me. He had a clumsy way of making a C chord, remembering it a half-fret at a time.

Inwardly I swore: no forgetting.)

So there I was, in the neighbor’s basement. We had known him forever, anyway. He was fifteen years older? Feels like he was much older than I am now. At least seventeen, if he remembered Bowie like that.

I noodled on his ancient synthesizer and he restrung his Yamaha 12-string. “Like Bowie’s.” And he told his story.

He was heavy into music, writing his own all of the time. He went on a cruise ship or some other inane vacation, to play. And someone said, one night, to him – very serious about his music. They said to him he sounded like something or some other thing. It was probably the 80s, so probably some other awful thing. Richard Marx, let’s say.

And he said, “Peter.” He said my name in this very convivial way, like, we’re just two Italian guys shooting the shit. It was not a way men usually said my name. Still not.

“Peter, I didn’t know if it was a compliment. I hadn’t heard anything new in a year. All I would listen to was myself.”

I was incredulous, still a fan more than a musician. How could he turn off everything else? It seemed likely a lie.

I got too familiar, I guess. The whole family lived there, and I got used to poking my head in if I got home late from rehearsal and the light was on.

I put my head in, and there they were, him and his best friend. Hardware on the table, but not the tool box like usual. Pipes and glass?

Pipes and glass, and he said, “do you want any” or maybe “you don’t want any,” and I, numb, just walked back across the porches to my door.

Figures, the one guy who could say my name like that and mean it and play those little hammers. But I knew what my goal was – I would have to learn my barre chords before there’d be any excess.

I forget him for a year or so, here and there. There are other stories – driving to the music store in South Philly, the time I almost cut my finger off and he came over because my mom was at work. That bass in pieces in my closet.

I’ve still never been that freebaser at the kitchen table. I must not be good enough at barres. But, now I know what it’s like to only listen to myself, to not want or need anything else.

I understand him that much.

thoughts right now / subway ride

March 2, 2009 by krisis

I ran into one of my favorite professors today on the subway, trundling to work in this non-event of a snowstorm.

We briefly caught up (me, married! him, reconstructing his house! my band, awesome!), and the conversation then turned to my blogging proclivity and how I have yet to abandon it. Which, (a) hilarious that my senior project adviser still asks me about my blog five years after the fact, but (b) way to stick the personal “blogger / songwriter” branding so that it’s the first thing he thinks of, even five years after the fact.

(me, old!)

Anyhow, us being two massive communications nerds having a conversation about communications on the subway, I sketched out the situation. Longest running, blah blah, own a single topic of conversation, blah blah, more magazine style content. Hit tracking, publics, &c, &c. Minus points for not somehow mentioning Cultivation Theory to prove that I am actually as big a nerd as I represent myself to be.

And, you know, as I was being my hip nerdy self for sixty seconds of subway exposition, it occurred to me that I spend more time plotting about blogging than I actually spend blogging.

It’s not such a bad thing, really. Well, it’s a medium bad thing. It’s equally good and bad. I love planning and organizing things so much that sometimes I’d rather not ever do the actual thing.

(This is actually a running theme in my life. See also: song database but no new recordings, exercise plan but no new muscles. The only time it works in my faovir is when having a plan inherently leads to the plan being success, as with a budget.

Anywho…)

There is technically a column I was going to post today. Well, it being 11:35, I think maybe technically has edged into theoretically. But the fact of the matter is, after a non-stop weekend of alternating social engagements and hardcore freelance writing and editing, I am in no mood to write a column.

And that, my friends, is the difference between a blog and a magazine. I can own all the topics I want, but there will still be this inanity sandwiched between.

God bless it.