Just as someone cannot (and should/ought not) to review a "best of", I don't feel real great about reviewing Tori Amos' latest release, Gold Dust, so I'll just, sort of, talk about it...occasionally praising or criticizing aspects of it...and then assign it a numerical value out of 10...just kidding...about the "assigning it a numerical value out of 10" thing...not the first part...so...let's just get started...
I've been into Tori's unique and sometimes controversial* sound since I was in high school. Most of it, at least. I tend to either love or ignore songs of hers with very few ever actually growing on me with repeat listens. In fact, there's not one album I can put on and just listen to all the way through, although To Venus and Back (the first disc) and From The Choirgirl Hotel come close. I have always considered myself a fan though (despite that Adult Contemporary phase she went through in the 2000's, give or take American Doll Posse), and I was excited to see the new direction she took with her bold and complex 2011 release, Night of Hunters, which she recorded with ostensibly nothing but her piano and an orchestra. The addition of an orchestra allowed the timeless nature of her music and voice to break free from any contemporary restraints she had gotten tangled up in and it was, I feel, a breath of fresh air that blew open a whole castle full of doors for Tori and her future creative endeavors.
To put it another way: Tori Amos had recontextualized herself as a musician, and nothing is more exciting and intriguing than that.
Gold Dust isn't a "best of". It's a collection of songs from Amos' two-decade career rearranged, rerecorded, reinterpreted and reimagined with the aforementioned orchestral motif. Some, like "Silent All These Years" and "Winter" are among her most well known songs while others, like "Snow Cherries From France" and "Flying Dutchman" are far less popular, but they are all loving recrafted here.
The benefits of the reworking ranges from track to track; with some, like "Yes, Anastasia", the difference is palpable, it sounds massive and historical and fully realized, with others, like "Flavor", the changes are absolutely noticeable and work very well, showing a different side of the song, and, with a few, "Programmable Soda" for instance, the versions are so similar that I barely noticed any difference. Although it's completely her right to do so, Tori did a great job of not trying to reinvent the beautiful wheels she's created over the past twenty years, but rather highlight or enhance different aspects (as with "Cloud On My Tongue" and "Silent All These Years").
Another very interesting element of the Gold Dust versions versus the original versions** is noticing how Tori's perspective seems to change. On "Silent All These Years", we see the girl from the original song reminiscing about her experiences from that time in her life as the woman she has become. The vulnerability of the girl is gone, replaced by the woman who has gotten her voice back. The woman who remembers. This perspective shift adds a lot to this, one of Tori's most beautiful and heartwrenching songs, and also to "Flying Dutchman" (which has recently become one of my favorite tracks of hers), the original version of which feels so carefree and joyous and young. The new version has less of the childish glee and youthful abandon, almost as if the original is Tori as a child and the Gold Dust version is Tori as that child's mother, watching her from a distance.
There are a few tracks I've never really gotten into ("Snow Cherries From France" and "Marianne") which I'd have happily swapped out for a number of others, but I don't really have a problem with any of them. The only track whose reenvisioning I actively do not like is "Jackie's Strength", originally from Choirgirl Hotel. This new version sounds too forced in its reflection, too lacking in the original's vulnerability.
But, again, that is one track of fourteen.
On the whole, every song is given a brand new life or, at least, a new perspective, as a result of this treatment; at the very worst, the new version might seem a bit unnecessary, simply spurring one to want to relisten to the original recording of the song in question, a fact that further speaks to how expert a songwriter Tori Amos is.
If I could have voted or selected more or different songs to be redone, I would have, but I'm incredibly happy, not only at how Gold Dust turned out, but at the simple fact that it exists. I love this approach to older material as a substitute to the typical half-assed and loathsome "best of" collections that artists seem to default to as their careers meander on. To revisit a work and see it in a different light, whether that light is tragedy or motherhood or merely the passage of time, is always exhilarating.
A little introspection can go a long way, as Tori has shown us here with her "song girls"; you should make a point to come and visit them and see how they've grown, and who they've matured into.
*Would you be surprised to learn that some people think Tori Amos' singing is horribly annoying?
** I found myself discerning between calling them "original" and "old"; usually in the cases where I liked the "original" version better than the Gold Dust version, or the Gold Dust version better than the "old" version.
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