FEATURE:
Revisiting…
Tori Amos - Ocean to Ocean
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I wanted to look back…
PHOTO CREDIT: Desmond Murray
at a terrific Tori Amos album from 2021 that is worth re-exploring. Whilst it received great reviews and got some airplay, you do not hear songs from the album played too much. If Amos is featured, you get the classic tracks from albums of the '90s. I wanted to shine a light on the marvellous Ocean to Ocean. Released on 29th October, 2021, Tori Amos produced one of her best albums of her career with stellar songs such as Speaking with Trees and Metal Wood Water. A top forty album in the U.K. and many other countries, it is well worth a spin. I am going to get to a couple of positive reviews for the incredible Ocean to Ocean. Before that, this interview with Amos in promotion of the album is really interesting:
“Throughout her iconic catalog, Tori Amos has often pulled inspiration from traveling – be that her frequent trips to Florida, or other travels around America and the rest of the globe. But like everyone else, the last two years have seen the inimitable artist restricted to one location. For her, that was the wild nature of Cornwall, where she lives with her husband and collaborator Mark Hawley, and its cliffs, shoreline, and greenery took on the role of muse in the place of new scenery.
The results are Ocean To Ocean, Amos’ 16th studio album, and a record of great beauty that works through the loss of her mother Mary with the help of the natural world. She summons her spirit on the spellbinding “Speaking With Trees,” while the gentle piano ripples of “Flowers Burn To Gold” find her searching: “Where are you?/I scan the skies/Voices in the breeze/I scan the sea.”
The contents of Ocean To Ocean weren’t necessarily always the shape the musician saw her first album in four years taking. She had been working on a different set of songs before it, but at the start of 2021 grew disillusioned with them and started again, returning to the soil to plant new seeds that would eventually grow and bloom into a personal and poetic ode to pain, family and the world around us.
The third lockdown in the UK was when ‘Ocean To Ocean’ started coming together, but that time also put you in a despondent place. What was it about that lockdown that took you to that place?
[Everything going on for so long] was one aspect. I think [also] the horror show of American democracy hanging by a thread with some elected officials just not wanting to respect the law. Whatever side you’re on, I really don’t like a crappy loser. It’s really not very interesting to me because I’ve been on the side where the candidate I voted for lost, but I’ve accepted it, that that’s the will of the people because that’s what democracy is. There’s no wiggle room there. You respect the constitution or you don’t – it can’t be rules for when you lose and rules for when you win. What kind of world is that?
You were working on a different album before ‘Ocean To Ocean’ that you scrapped because the 2020 election and events of January 6 made you feel like you’d become a different person. How did those events impact you?
There was so much that some of us believed was on the line. I remember talking to Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa [from the podcast Gaslit Nation] and they’re very informed experts in their field. One of them made it clear to me at a certain point when people were going on about these two older male candidates, and she said to me, “Let’s be very clear. We are not voting for one old man against another. We are voting for a system of government. That’s what we’re doing.”
After the events of not just January 6th and the insurrection, but how some of our leaders responded to that and did not stand up for America’s democratic values, but their own self-interest – I just put my hands up and I said, “Right, I’ve done what I can now. I can’t look at this for one more day.”
I didn’t like where I was going. I said, “Now I need to go into a world that people want to walk into because they’re tired of that. They’ve had enough of the disparity because the energy is so squalid.” I just felt like I needed to have a bath every time I picked up a paper or every time I was listening in on the issues.
I had to just let go and surrender that other album. I don’t know if it’ll have a life. I have no idea. But I needed the silence and I needed to get out in Mother Nature because she wasn’t in lockdown and she was regenerating. She was moving from winter to spring. That’s when I just said, “I want to reflect what you’re doing, Earth Mother.”
How did Cornwell influence this new album?
Cornwall is its own ancient thing. Sometimes the cliffs seem harsh but beautiful. But there’s a strength there. I felt protected walking out on those cliffs and seeing the force that the land holds and its interaction with the water, the ocean, and the rocks. Then coming inland a bit, how the trees are shaped with the gales. And it just became very, almost like its own story of, “Tori, you can choose to, be part of this story and you’re welcome to watch and engage with it.
Then it will shift your frequency and your energy and it will change the music, but you have to do it. And you have to be willing to admit where you are. It’s OK to admit that you’ve been in the muck. Just be honest about it. Because if you’re honest about it and write it from that place, you can write yourself out of that place”.
I am a big fan of Tori Amos, and I am fascinated not only by her consistency, but how every album has its own skin, personality, and story. Ocean to Ocean is definitely one of her very best releases. When speaking with SPIN, she elaborated more on the influences and inspirations behind the album. If you have not heard it yourself, I would recommend spending some time today and listening through. It is incredibly rewarding and will linger in the mind:
“SPIN: What was the inspiration for your album?
Tori Amos:I think that third lockdown here. I don’t know if the Americans really realized how severe it was here, but it happened after Christmas. It happened in early January. For London, it happened before Christmas, but we were down in Cornwall when they started locking the country down by different counties, but then everybody got thrown into this severe state. Hand on my heart, to try and be fair about this, I think hubby and I did pretty well on the first one with Tash and her boyfriend, Oliver, who thought he was coming for two weeks and stayed for five months.
Which song came first?
I think “Metal Water Wood” came first, and it acknowledged where I was with being fire and useless as a fire creature. It was just not working for me. The message from the muses was: Be like Bruce Lee, be like water. You need to then not do things like you’ve always done them, in that what you thought might work for you, what energy you thought would bring you to a place of a different frequency. I didn’t like where my energy was. I was like “I don’t want to be in that place of negativity and anger and destructiveness or victimhood.”
That was the beginning, and nature called me outside. Even though it was winter and cold, but once I got out there and started watching how nature was just, I don’t know, going through her cycles and paying attention and listening to it, I started to feel different things, and it started to shift my energy. The song started to say, “You have a choice to make, T. What energy feel do you want to be in? You need to sonically create it and step into it, and we will help you do it, but you have to make that choice.”
Was it a difficult process to go through?
I wish [my daughter] Tash were on the call. [laughs] She would tell you that there was a moment when she’s like, “I need my mom back. What do we need to do to do this?” She said, “Look, I’ve got you as my audience, so you’re going to get to watch my favorite documentary.” What was hard was getting out of that chair. I think I got to a place of emotional paralysis, because, again, we’d marketed the book (Resistance, released in 2020), we’d done a Christmas EP through the first lockdown and we did a virtual book tour from the studio we were working in that way, not playing live. We were doing all these things.
The messy part, that’s always the tough bit, and it’s not very glamorous or gracious, it’s when it’s the messy bit. I think before the beauty, for me anyway, comes the mess because you have to sit in the depression, in the sadness, in the grief, in the loss of– If you talk to, and I’m sure you have, to live musicians who couldn’t go out and play and to people whose lives are on the theatre stage, it was a very different reality for us.
I tried shaming myself out of it. That didn’t work. That’s why the music said, “You got to write. Start from on your knees. Write about it.” By writing about it, that will shift and then you’ll need to write about something else and another song will come and take your hands.” Another one did, and this is how the process kept drawing me outside to nature, to the cliff, to the water, to showing me. It was very humbling because the Cornish coast, yes, it’s beautiful, but it’s ferocious, ancient, and powerful. It’s like it’s a creature.
You use the word ancient, and I feel like there’s so much of that in the music here. There’s an innate history. Do you agree?
I hope so because I started revisiting Cornish mythology, not just Cornish, but the whole area. I think that had a big influence because it’s the longest that I haven’t been to the United States in my whole life. It’s the longest that I’ve been in one place in my whole life.
Once I pulled my head out of staring at my navel and realized, “Okay, what’s around you?” Hearing other people’s stories…a treasure trove of letters got sent to me through somebody who comes to the show. I got letters from all over the world about what people were going through. They just sensed that maybe I needed to share that. Normally, when I’m on tour, people bring me their letters and they share with me what their experience has been. That’s how then music becomes collaborative and the shows are collaborative.
While I was immersing myself with Cornwall and Cornish mythology in the angst of the land, and its power and being, again, humbled by it and realizing, “Okay, how do I approach this? I need to really ask permission of the land to show me her secrets.” I got stories from people all over the world, and these stories, Liza, what’s important, for the most part, people were having to come to terms with something. Everyone was pretty much challenged out of, I don’t know, 100 letters. Maybe two were going, “I’m an introvert. I’m winning. Can this last forever?”
Most of them were…somebody worked on the front line, now trying to dealing with testing, and trying to help people and what they were having to go through on a daily basis in their hazmat suit getting sadder, getting cursed at. It was just taking on board what people face.
It was such a transformative time for you.
That’s right. It was, “Okay, if you want your life to change, then just change it, but you’ve got to start from the inside.” It’s so cliché, I know, and we know”.
I will come to some reviews for Tori Amos’ sixteenth and most recent album. This is what AllMusic noted when they reviewed an album from one of music’s finest songwriters and most memorable voices. Since her 1992 debut album, Little Earthquakes, Tori Amos has produced such incredible and enduring music:
“For many, the early 2020s was a course-shifting season of change, when a global pandemic and sociopolitical upheaval cast a shadow over much of life. It was no different for singer/songwriter Tori Amos, who, during one of England's many lockdowns, penned an entire album that she later scrapped for being too divisive. In its place, she started fresh, shifting focus and processing grief with her 16th album Ocean to Ocean. As she declares on "Metal Water Wood," "It has been a brutal year." Against this backdrop, Amos does what she does best: turning personal trauma into a universal experience, carrying both herself and listeners out of the darkness with sights set on renewal. Despite the bittersweet emotions and the still-lingering uncertainty at the time of release, Ocean to Ocean comforts like a warm hug, benefitting from a sumptuous depth of layered production that is at once soulful and satisfying. From the outset, a familiar team -- husband/guitarist Mark Hawley, daughter/backing vocalist Tash, drummer Matt Chamberlain, bassist Jon Evans, and orchestral maestro John Philip Shenale -- joins Amos as she whips up a storm of sound and emotion with her trademark piano and vocal sorcery.
Diving headlong into the album's main themes on "Speaking with Trees," Amos addresses the death of her mother, Mary Ellen, crying, "I cannot let you go" as she copes with the devastating loss. Mary Ellen's memory is also alive on "Flowers Burn to Gold," a heartbreaking piano ballad that dwells beside "Toast" and "Mary's Eyes" as one of Amos' biggest tearjerkers. Emotions flow on the tender "Swim to New York State," a sentimental declaration of love and recognition to a loyal partner that swells atop a grand string section and cinematic horns. Turning her focus outward, she revisits common themes such as religious hypocrisy and misogyny (on the smoky fire-and-brimstone "Devil's Bane"), while calling out "those who don't give a goddamn" about the climate crisis on the turbulent title track. Amos later brings "Me and a Gun" full circle with "29 Years," this time tackling trauma and the devastation it can cause by reconciling the past through reflection and rebuilding. Some much-needed mirth appears on the highlight "Spies," which rides Evans' bouncing bass and Shenale's stabbing strings like a propulsive late-era Radiohead tune filtered through a quirky Beatles lens. Named after the mischievous entities who protect us from the bad dreams, "thieving meanies," and "scary men," it's an antidote for unsure and fearful times that's destined to become a fan favorite. Closing on "Birthday Baby" -- a self-empowering tango that recalls the cinematic flourish of Abnormally Attracted to Sin -- Amos sings, "This year, you survived through it all," a testament to endurance and emerging from the gloom. Like Native Invader before it, Ocean to Ocean is a late-era standout for Amos, who reaches through the dark cloud of collective grief to be that supportive presence for listeners, healing with familiar touches and a timely message”.
Let’s finish off with a review from The Line of Best Fit. Not only is there a lot of love for Amos from her native America (she was born in North Carolina), but because she lives in the U.K., there is this huge support and affection from fans and the media here. I can’t wait to see what she delivers for her seventeenth studio album:
“Amos’s newest LP, Ocean to Ocean, arrives four years after it’s predecessor Native Insider. In that time, the world has changed beyond recognition and Amos, like the rest of us, has been forced to battle with trauma resulting from the pandemic and ensuing isolation - but has also had to deal with the personal trauma of losing both her mother and best friend in 2019. The emotional centrepiece of this album - lead single “Speaking With Trees” - explores both simultaneously; referencing the ashes of Amos’s mother, which she hid in a treehouse in Florida (and was unable to visit during lockdown). Like her best songs, it features mystical lyricism alongside left-field arrangements and instrumentation (most notably an addictive guitar lick during the pre-chorus). However, it’s most affecting moment occurs in the song’s most sincere, wounded line: “Don’t be surprised / I cannot let you go”.
Much of Ocean to Ocean opts for this style of forthright song-writing, over the surreal world-building that has traditionally defined her work. Album highlight “Swim To New York State” deals with the aftermath of a friend moving away; capturing the pain of rootlessness but also the enduring beauty of a relationship that transcends physical distance. Amos cycles through all the places she’d like to go to with the person in question (“There’s a rockpool we can dive in”, “meet at that cafe”), but ultimately comes to peace with the separation (“I had to face / Life just wasn’t the same”). The song captures the same mixture of heart-break and resilience that made her early work so captivating.
But whereas Amos’s early work felt unmoored by time, Ocean to Ocean feels like it could only have been made now; “I know, dear, it has been a brutal year” she sings on “Metal Water Wood”; the album’s most explicit reference to the pandemic. “29 years”, as it’s title suggests, seems to reference the 29 years between her debut album and now. Meanwhile, the title track offers the most politically charged and unmistakably of-our-time statement. “Ocean to Ocean” demonstrates, once again, why Amos is such a powerful writer; “There are those who don’t give a Goddamn / That we’re near mass extinction” she sings at one point, referencing the role of uncaring elites in the current climate crisis. But, within the course of one line, she expands her sights: “There are those who never give a Goddamn for anything they are breaking”. What was just seconds ago a relatively straightforward examination of the climate crisis, has now turned into a takedown of all of society’s breakers; all the way from the rich and powerful inflicting environmental destruction to all the exploitative men (who have long been the subject of her songs) who think they can violate women in pursuit of their own desires.
Ocean to Ocean ends up being Amos’s best album in recent memory for the way it manages to combine the strengths of her early music while incorporating newfound restraint and perspective. Even if there’s nothing here as utterly devastating as “Me & A Gun”, or as piercing as “God”, it’s a joy that Amos can at once be as mystifying and inscrutable as ever (singing of “anonymous” hippopotamus and, aardvarks on the London Underground on “Spies”) while finding newfound comfort and understanding on tracks like “Speaking With Trees”. 29 years on from Little Earthquakes, Amos remains an unrivaled talent, capable of discussing and dissecting the very best and worst elements of humanity without ever collapsing under the heaviness of such themes”.
An amazing album from 2021 that was very well-received and celebrated. I don’t think that it is as known and played as it should be. There are so many good tracks on it. Even if you are not a diehard Tori Amos fan, it is well worth exploring. It is a typically astonishing album from…
THIS music icon.