floatingcity's Full Review: Under the Pink by Tori Amos
After the success of her re-debut album “Little Earthquakes”, Tori Amos headed to Taos in New Mexico to record her second solo album, “Under The Pink”. Thematically, it seeks to explore the relationships between women (obviously, pink being linked to femininity) as well as what goes on emotionally beneath the surface. If “Little Earthquakes” tonal and emotional qualities were earthy, rich and lush greens, “Under The Pink” has cooler, less intense baby blues. With a couple of minor exceptions, there’s a chilled, nearly laissez-faire vibe throughout the whole album: calm drum machine patterns roll instead of slam, and the piano playing is less varied and thunderous but much more complex in terms of structure, with thoughtful classical influences all over the place.
The album’s twelve songs can be roughly divided into three groups/styles, which also corresponds a little to their quality. First of all, there are the excellent rhythmic tracks, where a full band (bass, guitar, drum machine) accompanies Tori’s omnipresent piano-and-vocals setup; then there are the short but sweet solo piano/vocal songs, and finally the never-ending torture sessions known as the five minute-plus piano/vocal songs. I’ll go into detail in a second, but it’s well worth pointing out that overall, this album is nowhere near as startling as “Little Earthquakes”. If that album was perfectly planted on the line between ‘intelligent’ and ‘accessible’, “Under The Pink” spends a lot of time in areas that will be appreciated only by the most obsessive Toriphiles, while a couple of other songs sound so radio-friendly and simple most generic ‘divas’ could sing them. It’s a little troubling after such a balanced predecessor, but wading through the minefield does yield some stunning results.
Let’s start with those great full-band songs. “God” is the grooviest ode to blasphemy you’ll ever hear, built on a gently stuttering drum beat, a bit of rolling piano, and Tori doing some cool harmonising and a few catchy ‘woo-hoo’ vocals. There’s also some shrill and abrasive guitar noise present; it’s a little grating at first, but oddly works in the context of the song, perhaps being the ‘profane’ to the other part’s ‘sacred’. Top things off with a memorable and clever refrain (“God sometimes you just don’t come through/Do you need a woman to look after you?”), and you have a great rock song. “Past The Mission” is equally classy, consisting of bouncy and lounge-styled verses that suddenly switch to a sombre, morose and deeply produced refrain. Trent Reznor provides backing vocals here; it’s nothing to write home about, but his and Tori’s combined voices on the chilling “past the mission, I smell the roses” closer are oddly unsettling. Once again, it’s not instantly memorable, but still cleverly constructed and complex. “The Waitress” uses similar tricks, except this time the verse-chorus transition goes from calm to loud and histrionic, military drums blazing as Tori roars at the flirty server: “I believe in peace, b*tch!” I wouldn’t say there was any emotional content here at all, but her switch in singing styles is very well done from a technical standpoint. The final rhythm track is the album’s best, and that’s the astonishing “Cornflake Girl”. The lyrics deal with the pain of women’s betrayals of each other, backed up by a bouncy reggae-influenced piano-and-mandolin line, grooving bass and a great, catchy vocal hook on the “This is not really happening… you bet your life it is!” sections. It’s an amazing song, and easily deserves its place as one of Tori’s biggest hits.
Away from those great tracks, things get murkier. “Pretty Good Year” and “Baker, Baker” are fairly short and simple piano ballads backed up with a bit of grave-sounding orchestration. They’re lush and very easy-on-the-ears, but end up being rather generic and forgettable, as though any new age, sensitive-style female could have sung them. However, I still like certain aspects of the songs, such as the raging 20-second guitar outburst in the middle of “Pretty Good Year” likewise, the lyrics of “Baker, Baker” are nice and it’s good to hear a female singer-songwriter considering her own faults in a break-up scenario rather than just raging at the ex. “The Wrong Band” incorporates a Hammond organ and is kind of waltz-like, jiggly and off-kilter; it’s nicely short, but completely and utterly forgettable. Suffice to say, these three songs won’t be challenging “China” and “Winter” for the ‘Tori’s best ballad’ crown any time soon.
The final group of songs prove the real problem with the disc. “Bells For Her” displays an interesting use of a prepared piano (i.e. a piano with the internal parts modified, in this case with vaguely Oriental-sounding bells) and some thoughtful lyrics about changes in a friendship, but it just drags and drags using the same musical phrase for over five minutes. No variation, no key changes, no hook, nothing. Similarly, “Icicle” has excellent lyrics exploring self-expression, self-pleasure and release from the more puritanical aspects of religion, but is at least two minutes too long. Just endless, almost structure-free piano playing with nothing worth remembering. “Cloud On My Tongue” sounds musically similar to “Baker, Baker” (piano, bits of orchestration at certain points) but with vaguer lyrics and a lot of repetition, while “Space Dog” attempts the bass groove/piano mash-up of “Past The Mission” but ends up sounding like a barely cohesive mess, and the lyrics are too pretentious for their own good: “There’s Colonel dirtyfishydishcloth, he’ll distract her good/Don’t worry so”. Sure, Tori.
The interminable “Yes, Anastacia” is the closing song; it’s nine minutes of rambling, disconnected piano playing that occasionally gets broken up by some awesome, dramatic orchestration. It purports to explore the story of lost Russian princess Anastacia Romanov, but doesn’t really say anything interesting (except for maybe one or two lines). If you simply love the sound of a piano, you’ll love these last few songs, but personally I find it hard to get why anyone would spend ten minutes listening to “Yes, Anastacia” when they could hear the catchier and more thematically meaningful “God” or “Cornflake Girl” two or three times instead. Thing is, these long piano songs aren’t total throwaways, but more like one or two good ideas (a nice lyric, a clever theme, a good piano phrase) surrounded by many, many poor ones.
I guess the real issue that crops up here is that with the exception of “God”, “Past The Mission” and “Cornflake Girl”, none of these songs impress me the same way that ANY of the songs from “Little Earthquakes” did. “Under The Pink” is certainly not a bad album: it’s fairly easy to enjoy or at least appreciate nine of the twelve songs, but despite that factor there’s nothing here Tori’s debut didn’t do much better. Make of that what you will, but I won’t be repeating this one anywhere near as often as “Little Earthquakes”.
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