Tori Amos: Unrepentant Geraldines – review

Unrepentant Geraldines finds Tori Amos, if not exactly repentant, then willing to appease her audience with a more straightforward experience than her recent adventures in classical music.

So we get jaunty piano-led melodies, swooping Kate Bush vocals, wordy lyrics encompassing everything from NSA surveillance (“Giant’s Rolling Pin”) to mother-daughter relations (“Promise”). Amos’s irrepressible capacity to over-reach is evident on the clunky “16 Shades of Blue”, but “The Wedding Day” finds her at her best, delivering a folky account of a wife dreaming of a happier time in her marriage, hinging on a giddily sung refrain: “I run back to your arms again.”

Tori Amos

Unrepentant Geraldines

(Mercury Classics)