On her last album, American Doll Posse, Tori Amos adopted four personas—cast in Roman and Greek mythology—to perform its 23 songs. This time around, it’s just her. She rang The Coast from her home in Cornwall, England (evening weather report: “Enh”), where she and her engineer husband, Mark Hawley, plus Marcel Van Limbeek, produced Abnormally Attracted to Sin. The package includes 16 “visualettes”—not quite videos, not quite short films—directed by Christian Lamb. This is her 10th album.
In the official bio for this record you describe it as being “really handmade”. What do you mean by that?
Well…I mean…maybe I was looking at one of my sparkled jumpsuits when I said that, I don’t know. Because the jumpsuits I had on the last tour, they were done by a designer called Ashish. Everything is done in India. It’s handmade, all the beading is hand-sewn. So I think it’s one of those things when you know the recording process and you know the production process and it’s hard to describe it, I guess, to other people. But how things are done and made—for instance, when you go to certain mixers that are famous mixers, they have their boards tweaked in a certain way. And with what we’re doing, everything is taken down and started again and treated completely differently. It’s not an assembly line.
And what song came first in this collection?
Probably I think going back in my mind, possibly “Give.” We were out on the road and Christian Lamb had jumped on the buses to film the live DVD [of the American Doll Posse Tour] . He was doing these montages of life that would be b-roll, but as I started to be shown them and he had music from the live show, until I turned the live music off I couldn’t see what was being created. And once I did, then a certain song would work with the montages. And by no means was it a finished film-and-sonic presentation out there on the road, but it was enough for me to recognize: I’m not just making a live DVD now.
Did you actually feel like you were making a film as well? The visualettes, I would imagine, would take a lot of work too. It took a lot of work. A year and a half. Christian will say ‘It’s a labour of love,’ [laughs], for sure. Because it just became a very collaborative process between visuals and audio. And even though the audio ether can alone and live alone, as it has to be able to do, but I think with the visualettes there’s another dimension to what’s going on.
Are they meant to convey a narrative, an arc?
They’re abstract. It’s super-8 footage, and it’s traveling the world, and just getting a feeling. There’s a rawness to them. I think they work together. My work is a lot more akin to, I would say, the visual art world and sonic art world, so it’s the sonic installation thing. As opposed to they’re films. It’d be more like silent films, with the song giving you part of the story.
How were scenarios conceived?
Every one was different. We got along really well, had a great email relationship where thoughts would get sent back and forth. I’d send him music up through the ether, it would go up, and he’d go off and think about it, and it would be ‘Meet me in New Orleans.’ It was one of those projects where it did develop over time. The songwriting came in different big spurts and so then we would film after one big lot of recording. And then I was in LA for the summer last year, and a whole other set of songs came, so then filming had to be done for that. You know there were other songs that I’d written, it’s just they got edited out, they didn’t get used. There’s a big editing process that goes on. I’ve been making double albums for the last few albums.
I’ve noticed. [Ed note: American Doll Posse, 2007, 23 songs. The Beekeeper, 2005, 19 songs. Scarlet’s Walk, 2002, 18 songs.]
Yeah but that’s the form I’m interested in right now.
But it’s not like it’s filler, it’s not like there are a dozen great songs and 10 shit songs, it all connects.
Look it’s funny, I know some journalists must think under their breath, ‘Goddamn it Tori, why are you doing this? I’m busy, I have shit to do.’ But I can’t start making records because the journalists are busy. Because then this is a world when the Germans should cook and the Italians should tell time.
I’m very intrigued by ‘Lady in Blue.’ It feels like a sort of traditional album closer, and then she says ‘I can play too’ and it feels like a beginning. Did it come together in the studio as this epic?
I had been listening a lot to double albums over the last year-and-a-half, so it was in my mind, all kinds of things. With music being played after a song finishes—the story for ‘Lady in Blue,’ it all came together because he may still love her and she may love this man, but he has a wife and a family. And he can’t leave them, he says that—‘pillow cold/but she won’t stray into other lands/take my hand/to the lady in blue: you wronged the right man’. She left him a long time ago to probably pursue her career, so in the end what she has is her music. And the fact that she can play on obviously both levels, and so she does, because that’s what she can do.
Have you ever been asked or would you care to produce anyone else’s record?
I’ve been asked. I don’t know if I would…I don’t know. Maybe in the coming years, down the line. I think you have to be in a certain place mentally to do that. And I don’t have a lot of tolerance if the artists are, you know, playing star. I’d have to kick their ass. I’d have to do terrible things to them.
It’s like directing a film, also a case of needing to feel connected to the material.
There are all kinds of things to do. I think there are people I work with who would be good at working with other artists and do and can, but I think because I’m a composer first, I just think that’s my head first. More than a producer, I’m a composer. And that is important to know about yourself. Because I do think there are some people who are producers first—can write, you see what I mean—but I also think there are also directors who are really directors who can write but they might get screenwriters to come in. And I know that I’m more of the songwriter first. I don’t produce alone, it’s a production team, it’s Mark and Marcel. I work well with teams. I mean Christian, he had his team, and it was one of those things where whether it’s working the musicians, or the arranger, or working with Mark and Marcel, Christian and Chris—I just do better, I think, I don’t know, having a roundtable and delegate thought and say ‘Who’s got the best idea?’ That’s what we’re gonna go with.
Best idea wins.
Best idea wins, yeah! And sometimes it’s the ego, because I don’t need to be right, I just want it to be right.
Visualette for “Curtain Call”:
Visualette for “Maybe California”
(embed not possible)
This article appears in May 21-27, 2009.