Unrepentant Geraldines by Tori Amos | Album Review
Amos’s 14th album is an art meets sound return to form after her classical outings.
After working with the classical label Deutche-Grammaphon on both an original song cycle (Night of Hunters) and a 20-year celebration of and reinvention of her classics (Gold Dust), Amos was finally ready to write pop/rock music again. The album was produced and programmed by Tori’s husband, Mark Hawley, at her Cornwall recording studio. She got the idea to use artwork as an inspiration for the songs on the album from the Daniel Maclise piece Geraldine that hangs in her Cornwall home. Through this, she weaved in inspiration from other art pieces and artists into the songwriting of her album Unrepentant Geraldines. The title is a statement on not compromising yourself for anyone else.
The album is a bit mixed when it comes to the more fully band-oriented tracks. Where some hit the mark, others fall flat. I find the biggest reason behind this is the thinness of the overall sound. Unlike prior projects, the guitars, drums, and the like a much softer and subdued here. For some tracks, it acts to enhance the experience, but on others, it just leaves you wanting to add more spice to bring out the song’s true essence.
“America” is a prime example of this more suppressed approach. I’m not the biggest fan of the mixing. It comes off rather thin and watered down compared to some of the other instrumentation on the album. The song takes a more subdued political approach by looking at the “other America” trying to wake up the rest of the country to the many injustices taking place, “‘is anybody home?/ or did they all lay down/ to sleep through the now?/ and if they all lay down/ I’ll be waiting for them/ at the river bed/ once they wake from their rest’.” This “other America” could reference many minority groups whose rights are attacked daily by those in power. My biggest gripe about the song is its lacy structure.
“Wedding Day” is probably the most adult contemporary-sounding song on the album. The soft mix of piano, Mellotron flutes, and guitars conjure up the imagery of wedding attire and celebration. A holdover from her work on her 2012 project Gold Dust, I don’t like the thinness of her panned-out vocals. She sounds much better when doubled/tripled up in the chorus, which had never been something she needed prior to this. We take a retrospective look at our relationship in the song. The opening lines, “the deafening sound of silence/ Silence the siren between us”, gives us the foundation for where the couple is at currently. The juxtaposition against the honeymoon era of love surrounding their wedding shows us how far the couple has fallen from each other.
The first taste of the album we got was from the slightly western-inspired “Trouble’s Lament”. I can see why this was chosen as the album’s lead single. Vocally, she sounds fuller and richer compared to some of the other tracks. Although a bit soft in tone, it still has an edge that only Amos can provide. I love the little vocal growl she brings in at the line, “If Danger wants to find me/ I’ll let him in/ he can find me.” Amos uses the personification of Trouble and Danger as a way to display trying to find help from someone whose harming you in some way.
“‘Trouble’ is in all of us. Any gal knows that. I have run from Satan a few times in my day! Satan can be in a very nice suit in a very nice corporate office. It can be your boss, or it can be someone you are working with or fell in love with or both. You weren’t looking at what you were allowing yourself to be involved in. Maybe you do? Maybe you put your head in the sand? I don’t know — it’s different for different women. But then at some point, you recognize it and realize it’s becoming destructive. Extricating yourself from it is not all that easy. In that song, Trouble is on the run and the question is whether or not she will find friends to help her along the way.”
I find this to be another really well-written story-based track. Tori is really at her best in these moments.
Probably the track I connect with the least is the politically charged “Giant’s Rolling Pin”. Something about the plucky nature of the ukulele mixed with the piano feels a bit too jaunty. This is the most politically charged song on the entire album. While her whimsical metaphor around a bakery of truths surrounding the dangers of government spying programs. I understand keeping a light-hearted tone to not make the song too serious, but it just falls a bit flat for me.
One of the most experimental tracks off the album is the more electronically based “16 Shades of Blue”. You get moments of synth-plucked strings, ticking clocks, and even kazoos. The track openly deals with Tori’s fears of aging as she turns the corner on 50. Amos drew inspiration from Cézanne’s The Black Marble Clock:
“So “16 Shades” could only come once, I guess, I was battling myself with the idea of turning fifty. A few things had to align for me to get it, um, and looking at “The Black [Marble] Clock” by Cézanne, and reading about how he approached his work, with quotes from all kinds of writers — from Hemingway to Rilke — and because of the writers and their perception, I started to understand it. And Rilke talking about that Cézanne would have sixteen shades of blue sometimes on his palette. So therefore, it all came together. I turned a page, looked at “The Black Clock,” no hands, battling my own issues with age — so battling it that I’ve been hearing from teenagers, twentysomethings, and thirtysomethings that I…you know, middle-age women don’t have the copyright on battling age, so move over, sister. It’s like, oh, get off the cross. Um, having heard all that, it just all came together and while I was supposed to be working on “Weatherman” at Christmas, “16 Shades” was written in a couple days, like that, after years and years and years and years of getting books by Cézanne and frustrating a lot of people, finally it came together within forty-eight hours.”
Connecting the music to the artwork gave me a different appreciation for the song. Although a bit eclectic, I admire the experimentation she takes. She gives a unique take on aging and coming to terms with that.
“Rose Dover” is another track whose odd character doesn’t quite hit me. Here, it’s the change in time signature and key that feels like a bit of a schism sonically. I get the tone she is going for in a sort of dark looming adulthood juxtaposed again with a more youthful tone of imagination. I just wish it had better cohesion to it. She reasons with this teenage individual that you don’t have to lose your imaginative/creative side to be mature, “she says ‘my reality was soon called / Make Believe, imagination’s funeral / killed by the teenage me’ / you don’t have to throw it away / throw being a kid away / just because you’re growing up.” Tori’s worlds paint a bit of whimsy around this person to bring some of the youthfulness back to them. I understand the sonic transition from dark to spritely as a play on serious adulthood to joyful child. It just doesn’t grab me.
Our titular track, “Unrepentant Geraldines,” breaks us free of the bonds of religion. Amos threads in some of the gnostic gospel's ideas into the opening verse. I love the hook of, “I’m gonna free myself from your opinion /I’m gonna heal myself from your religion / I’m gonna free myself from your aggression / I’m gonna heal myself from your religion,” at the midpoint of the song. She ends the track with the tale of the Vicar’s wife who seems to breaking her own chains through the work of music. There is a 70s rock flavor that Amos takes with this track. I just feel that the song is a bit too soft to pack a strong punch. I wish it kept the same energy as the hook.
“Maids of Elfen-Mere” takes on the most mythological tone compared to the rest of the tracks. Lyrically, you can see how she was directly influenced by Dante Rossetti, The Maids of Elfen-mere. I like the rich sound Tori takes with both her piano melody and soft rushing backing percussion. She tells a story to these women. They foresee a woman in this man’s future, but are unsure of where the fates aline for them, “Spinning their song/ Sung by a happy corpse/ Foreseeing/ A pretty girl drawing/ Her arrow/ But what they want to know/ Will the Queen of Eastland/ Or the Wastelands be waking.” This song puts on display the strength that Tori has around creating very evocative songwriting.
“Promise” is a very sweet duet between Tori and her daughter Natashya “Tash” Hawley. Out of all the dressed-up songs on the album, this one feels the most whole. I absolutely love the richness Amos’s B3 adds to the song, especially against her piano work. The promises both give to one another are what they will and won’t do to each other:
“What happens when a mom and daughter don’t even get to the point of talking? They don’t even get that far because the walls come up. So we decided let’s sing something that talks about what we won’t do, what we say we won’t do to each other and what we say we will do for each other.”
I really like the interplay between mother and daughter here, “Tash: Promise not to judge/ Tori: to judge who you love/ I don’t know if I… / Tash: Yes, make that Promise / Tori: whatever it is / Tash: can you hear the truth/ if they accuse me / Tori: you think I’ll doubt you?/ what I need to know, will you.” Tash’s vocal skills are quite lovely when paired up against her mothers. The chorus’s promise of being there no matter what on both’s behalf wraps the song up wonderfully in my opinion.
Where the album really shines is on the more solo piano-based tracks. Tori’s skill at crafting emotionally evocative melodies is her strength. The beautifully serene “Selkie” is one of the first songs that comes to mind. Amos weaves a story behind the myth of selkies who can shape-shift between humans and seals. She gives a real tenderness to this mythological woman’s love for this man, “He said, ‘I know these shores are not like yours but/ Will you make your home in my arms?’/ Selkie battled tide and wave/ Just to gaze upon his face/ Hiding behind rocks to learn/ If he found a new love.” This is probably one of my favorite piano and vocal tracks on the album.
“Wild Way” is a very simple piano and guitar-based track. The subtlety of the guitar work really emphasizes the angst behind Amos’s words. We look into the frustrations of a woman who is so angry that she still loves this man despite his treatment of her. She doubles this back at the man who is arguing with her to show him what he dislikes about her now is what he used to love in her the most, “when my battlements were strong / before the pilgrims came / don’t forget you were the one / who loved my wild way.” Tori’s more delicate delivery adds a more venomous edge. The chorus, “I hate you / I hate you / I do / I hate that / I turn into a kind / some kind of monster / with just just a flick of your finger / it is that easy”, brings this out fantastically.
“Weatherman” is a very touching look at the loss of a partner. The man in the story aches deeply over the loss of his wife and yet sees her anew in the landscapes and seasons around him.
“In ‘Weatherman,’ he loves his bride so much, and she dies. He can’t move on. That’s how true and deep his love is. Nature itself not just pities him, but decides to bring his wife back to life by painting her through the seasons.”
This song probably has some of her best lyricism on the album. The lines, “Autumn’s peach black/ Winter’s velvet coat/ Pink Tourmaline,/ palette of Spring/ in Summer she’s wrapped in Viennese green”, beautifully display the spirit of his wife flowing through the scenery around him.
“Oysters” is another highlight on the album. The delicate sense of texture that Amos’s piano melodies provide brings to mind turning over oysters on a cold beach somewhere in the Northeastern U.S. or England. It’s a look into feeling unfulfilled:
“‘Oysters’ was in development for quite some time, mainly, I guess, because I had to travel, really travel with that one. And it originated itself first in Ireland again — a few years ago, perhaps around, right before the Night of Hunters time, but it was somewhat different then — so it’s really taken on a different character, and I’d say to you, a different, um, accompaniment language, which then pushed the melody into different places. Some things were retained, um, from the original idea but it, it needed to grow, and I think it’s because at the time, I hadn’t captured the sadness, the melancholy that I needed to capture. I was hearing different stories from different women about the idea of, um, not having accomplished certain things, and they were stuck.”
The metaphor of turning oysters over relates to her hunt for inner self-worth. Much like “16 Shades of Blue”, you hear the mournful tone of aging into someone she didn’t think she’d become, “so can these shoes take me to
who I was before / I was stabbing my sticks into / a vulnerable earth / and I can almost out run you / and those stalking memories / did I somehow become you/ without realizing.”
We end off the album on “Invisible Boy”. The song is a very tender autumnal piece. Tori herself said the song is meant to capture the sensitivity of men who feel they can’t express this in her Spotify interview:
“Once I understood that “Invisible Boy” is a sensitive person that isn’t always able to show himself because his mates might think that he’s not tough enough or masculine enough, so the fact that he’s a romantic — whatever, whatever his sexuality is — the fact that he, um, has really good friends with women and cares about them, um, the fact that he does have these strong emotions but can’t necessarily express them and is afraid that if he does, he could be bully or ridiculed, so he just doesn’t share them. And I wanted the song to be for all those people that exist more than I think we realize they do.”
She gives this man the agency to access his sensitivity, “You could sit down beside her, hold her as she cries/ Call upon your friends the cloud riders to unlock the sky/ Then wave to the snowdrops skating by/ Catch the laughter from her eyes.” It’s a beautifully comforting end to this return to form for Amos.
I appreciate the return to form for Amos. I think writing for Deutche-Grammaphon really exercised her written muscle to its betterment. Compared to her last contemporary work, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, this album writes circles around tenfold. Where it loses me is in its production. The sound is very pastel. Its strength comes from its more simplistic approaches, which feel very well-rounded. Tracks like “America”, “Giant’s Rolling Pin”, and “Wedding Day” sound a bit too translucent from this choice. The continued use of the same vocal processing carried over from Gold Dust really doubles down on the watercolor texture of some of the songs. All in all, it’s a solid return to pop/alternative music for Tori and worthy of a listen. My overall thoughts on Unrepentant Geraldines:
Loved it: “Trouble’s Lament”, “Promise”, “Wild Way”, “Weatherman”, “Selkie”, “Maids of Elfen-Mere”, “Invisible Boy” & “Oysters”
Liked it: “America”, “Wedding Day”, “Unrepentant Geraldines”, “16 Shades of Blue”, “Rose Dover”
Disliked it: “Giant’s Rolling Pin”
My overall rating: 6.5 out of 10.
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