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Review of Tori Amos' "Little Earthquakes"

© Nick Bendel

"Everyone told me this 'girl on the piano' thing was never going to work." No one sums up Tori Amos like Tori Amos herself. So for those wondering what her debut album Little Earthquakes (1992) sounds like, perhaps it's better to let Ms Amos provide the explanations. "I do sound like the Little Mermaid on Acid."

A very apt description if ever there was one. This is a singer with a clear and powerful voice on the one hand, yet a distinctive roughness on the other. Hearing her sweetly sing a love song like 'China' gives the impression of a choirgirl sitting in front of her piano. 'Me and A Gun' though, a song about rape, conveys just the opposite impression. On Little Earthquakes the listener is benefited with the full range of the singer's feelings and its hard not to be captivated by such raw emotion.

Complimenting this is Amos' obviously strong musical abilities. Some of the songs, like 'Leather', are brilliant. Her cynicism here is obvious. "Look I'm standing naked before you/don't you want more than my sex/I can scream as loud as your last one/but I can't claim innocence".

And don't expect every song to sound the same either. 'Me and A Gun' is just Tori Amos singing, with no instrumental back up, a sparseness which amplifies the subject matter. 'Winter' is a slow ballad. And on 'Happy Phantom' she gets as bouncy as she ever does- "there's Judy Garland taking Buddha by the hand/and then these seven little men get up to dance/they say Confucius does his crossword with a pen/I'm still the angel to a girl who hates to sin."

It's fair to say that Little Earthquakes isn't an album for the fainthearted. It's also one of those that some people will love and many others will hate. Tori Amos is quite intense and a little weird too. But with songs like hers, who really cares?

RATING: 8/10