Tori Amos
Ocean to Ocean
Decca
Buy via Official Store | Listen Below
When we included Tori Amos in our annual, forward-looking roundup of the “Albums We Can’t Wait to Hear” back in early January, the decision to do so was prompted by a fair amount of wishful thinking and crossed fingers. No actionable details about her sixteenth studio affair had actually emerged at the time. But it was as if we were willing it to be so, summoning a Field of Dreams type of Jedi mind trick (“If you write about it, it will come”).
Not that we can claim credit for it whatsoever, but it, Ocean to Ocean, has indeed come. And it arrives four years after its precursor Native Invader (2017) surfaced, marking the longest gestation period between albums in Amos’ incredulously prolific recording career dating back to her breakthrough 1992 debut Little Earthquakes. But once again, the old adage that suggests that good things come to those who wait has been validated by Amos’ stirring, incisive and timely songcraft.
“The songs surrounded me and pulled me out of a dark place,” Tori Amos recently intimated when discussing the new album. “The album’s about dealing with grief and loss, and renewal and rebirth.” Sure, the songs are rooted in Amos’ personal experiences in processing her mother’s passing in 2019, adjusting to COVID-imposed lockdown and lamenting the salient political and climate crises of the day. But the broad spectrum—indeed the tidal waves—of emotion that drives the thematic substance of Ocean to Ocean’s eleven compositions arguably connect on a more universal level than any of her previous LPs.
A contemplative ode to reconciling anguish, the opening “Addition of Light Divided” begins with weighty, somber tones in its arrangement. But then it segues into a more propulsive, uplifting soundscape accompanying its chorus, which suggests the song’s subject awakening from an angst-ridden slumber (“I woke up (I woke up) / In an aqua / Tourmaline dream”). In its shapeshifting, the song establishes the disposition that governs the entirety of the album, in that it seems to mirror the emotional highs and lows that many among us have traversed during the past nineteen months and counting.
An unequivocal highlight, the second official single “Spies” gathers steam as an up-tempo stormer, replete with allusions to misunderstood forces tasked with protecting us during periods of uncertainty. Sonically speaking, “Spies” evinces a more adventurous Amos adding nuanced colors to her musical palette, with multi-layered vocalizing and a nod to the lyrical playfulness of the Abbey Road-era Beatles evidenced just before the five-minute mark.
Amos conjures memories of her late mother Mary Ellen in the charging, electric-guitar imbued lead single “Speaking with Trees,” confiding in the song’s poignant chorus that “I’ve been hiding your ashes / Under the tree house / Don't be surprised / I cannot let you go / You will be safe here / Safe in the tree house / They will protect you / Of this / I am sure.” Echoes of her mother resurface later in the album with the beautifully sparse, piano-driven reflections of “Flowers Burn to Gold.”
The strings-laden “Swim to New York State” is my personal favorite, as it inhabits a sweeping, symphonic majesty with its evocation of love and loyalty unencumbered by distance. Love is never perfect, the song seems to suggest, but it’s worth fighting—and crossing the Atlantic Ocean—for nevertheless.
Other notable moments that have me pressing the repeat button include the languid, Zero 7-reminiscent groove of “Devil’s Bane,” which finds Amos revisiting the familiar theme of religious hypocrisy, an intrinsically American phenomenon that has mutated and proliferated in terrifying ways throughout this current epoch of unabashed Trumpism. Likewise, the titular “Ocean to Ocean” takes the ethically compromised to task, and more specifically, those who deny the adverse impact of climate change and are thereby complicit in accelerating the darker periods that assuredly await humanity in the not-too-distant future.
Ocean to Ocean concludes with a message of hope and resilience in the form of “Birthday Baby,” which acknowledges our ability to endure through recent turmoil (“This year / You survived through it all / A cosmic apocalypse / A stab to the heart”). Indeed, the inspired songs that Amos has blessed us with across Ocean to Ocean offer convincing testament to the powerful, healing role that music plays in helping us navigate and persevere through the adversities of the day. And for this, among a multitude of other reasons, we owe Tori Amos our gratitude.
Notable Tracks: “Addition of Light Divided” | “Spies” | “Swim to New York State”
BUY Ocean To Ocean via Tori Amos’ Official Store
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