Nov 17, 2022
Took a Taxi From LA to Venus | Amos’s 5th Album Continues Her Plugged Sound With a Side of Trip-Hop.
From the Choirgirl Hotel bites with its anger and sadness. Following up the album, a year later, is a collection of more atmospheric alt jams that she was inspired to write on her Plugged tour. To Venus and Back was originally supposed to be a b-sides and live double album.
On the inspiration for the album, Tori to USA Today:
“After the Plugged tour, I sort of walked into a fierce calm. I didn’t need to be someone’s daughter, wife, or mother — even though I am a daughter and a wife, and motherhood kind of just slipped through time and space for me. The record is just about being a woman and waking up every day… Most songs didn’t come until the title was in place. My friend Natalie looked at me at one point and said, ‘You know you would go to Venus, or that you’ve been there.’ If you’re gonna approach the Venus realm, seduction lives there, obsession lives there, trustworthy lust lives there, decadence lives there, control lives there.”
Tori’s choice of ambient synths, riverbed pianos, and brighter production mirror this sea change in mindset. This collection of songs includes a 13-track live album, which brings together some of her favorite performances from the Plugged tour.
The album opens with the airy sounds of “Bliss.” We’re stepping back out again to try and find our happiness after the events of Choirgirl. Amos told Mojo the song is more about control:
“To me it’s not just about the biological father, but also the authority figure, whoever it is that I put in that position. “Bliss” is really about control, and about certain things in our DNA that you can’t use a strainer to get rid of. You can’t separate completely from whoever made you, because they’re a part of you.”
It has a weight to it. I love the growling bass from Matt Chamberlain. There is a clear push away from the biblical teethers as well. The anger towards the powers that be is still seething underneath, and she’s ready to grab the wheel. By the chorus, the song strips away the darker atmosphere as she defines her own satisfaction, “steady as it comes/ right down/ to you/ I’ve said it all/ so maybe we’re a Bliss/ of another kind.”
It’s a very strong opener. I love the thick atmospheric nature it permeates.
“Juarez” takes its name from the city of Ciudad Juárez in northern Mexico. Amos was taken by the stories of the numerous femicides in the region from 1993 to 2005:
“I read an article about several hundred women in Juarez, Mexico, who had been taken out to the desert and brutally raped and murdered. When they didn’t come home, their brothers would go and look for them, and many times they’d find nothing. Sometimes they’d find a hair barrette or a sock or something they knew was their sister’s. The authorities haven’t really done anything about it… they get into this serial killer theory. I mean, how much serial can one man indulge in? So, as the song started to develop, I really began taking the voice of the desert, singing in that perspective.”
The atmosphere takes a much more oppressive claustrophobic air. John Evan’s bass lines are the stars of the song. Put them alongside the loose hollow synth lines, desolate piano, and Tori’s breathy vocals conjure up the bleakness of the desert.
The lines “cause the desert likes/ young girl’s flesh” and “so go on and spill your seed/ shake your gun to the rasta man’s head/ ’cause the desert — she must be blessed” do an excellent job of giving a horrid life to the harrowing situation happening in the region. Even though it’s more electric in nature, the execution is done wonderfully.
I have to highlight the live takes she did during the 1999 tour, where it’s just her and the piano. The verses are played on the piano’s strings percussively. It really takes the song to a new plane.
“Concertina” adds cosmic lightness after the heaviness of “Juarez.” Tori dual wields the Bosendorfer and keyboard mightily. There’s a tension between Amos and the others in the room, “a chill that bends/ this I swear you’re the fiercest / calm I’ve been in.”
Tori is focusing on those abrasive scenarios where you feel the energy in the room and wonder how you’re going to evade the landmines. I prefer the single mix more to the album version. It adds just a bit more brightness and some nice backing vocals in the second verse, which I think adds more to the overall texture of the song.
The most playful track is “Glory of the 80s.” Here Tori reminisces on her decadence and fearlessness during the time, “no one feeling insecure we were/ all gorge and famous in our last lives.”
There are references to cocaine-fueled parties, “with karma drawn up in lines/ and two bugle boy models saying “baby/ it’s a freebie you sure look deprived,” drag kings, and other models and characters throughout the song. There is a heaviness as well. This was also the dawn and growing height of the AIDs epidemic. When she sings, “and then when it all seemed clear/ just then you go a disappear,” it feels like a hole is left in her heart around the fun she used to have. It’s hard to tell if the keys are an electric sample of the harpsichord or her actual harpsichord used in the track. I find the song fun and upbeat with its rubbery beats and sharp guitar, but I rarely return to it often.
We bring back a very spacious atmosphere on “Lust.” The delay on Amos’s vocals and piano and Caton’s guitar work feel like sinking in a deep blue pool of water. This is echoed in the words' discourse between the man and woman. There’s a need for trust here, “she feels she isn’t heard/ and the veil tears and rages/ till her voices are remembered/ and his secrets can be told.”
Tori references this in a Los Angeles Times interview in 1999:
“I really got that what lust meant to me in my 20s was very different. I’ve loved people and not lusted [after] them. But I found that I hadn’t experienced lust until I had some kind of trust for someone.”
She begins to let loose those boundaries in the song’s chorus. I like his tenderness towards her trepidations on trust (which is a way more intimate thing, in my opinion) at the song’s end, “so she prays for a prankster/ and lust in the marriage bed/ and he waits till she can give/ and he waits and he waits.” On a side note, the song was used in the second season of Charmed during the opening of the Awakening episode.
I love this song. It’s sort of an epitome of this atmospheric alt-rock she’s culminated here.
“Suede” continues this pseudo-trip-hop vibe that “Lust” just began to touch. It’s much more washed in thicker synths and pulled guitar tones. It also continues to this amorous nature lyrically. She compares her partner’s skin to the lushness of suede. This sexual tension between the two feels like a spell of sorts over her, “…and this./ has power over me. Not because you feel/ something or don’t feel something/ for me but because./ mass. So big. it can swallow swallow/ her whole star intact.” It ends on what feels like back and forth between a more lucid younger version of herself judging her current self’s actions. I like the flow she’s established from the last track.
“Josephine” is a short track about Empress Josephine and Napoleon Bonaparte. Continuing the notion of yearning, Josephine haunts Napoleon during his invasion of Moscow. Through the war and narrow victories, these aching feelings feel almost like taunting, “In the last extremity — to advance/ or not to advance — I hear/ you laughing/ even still you’re calling me/ not tonight, not tonight/ not tonight/ Josephine.”
Matt Chamberlin’s drums provide the army march to Tori’s almost modern Victorian piano lines. Lyrically, I think it’s one of my favorites of the album. My only detractor is its short length of two minutes and thirty seconds.
We blend immediately into “Riot Poof.” Tori has noted the song both as referencing the gay community (as “Poof” is used as a pejorative in Europe towards homosexuals, especially male homosexuals) and as a duality between control and conquerer. I personally get the former notion from the track. It’s a sort of call to arms for those oppressed by society and religious institutions for their sexuality. As a gay man myself, it’s a subject I understand well. The chorus really calls for a birthing of your true self and fighting for it, “it will all find its way in time/ blossom, riot poof.” This is one of the more alt-rock-inspired electronic jams. I love the vibe. I do find the lyrics to be a bit obtuse at times, but it’s never alienated me from the song overall.
The longest track on the album is the unique “Datura.” Having been working on “Zero Point,” a track from the Venus sessions that was released in 2006, she was called to record “Datura” from issues around her garden. The song is a soaring motion of sound as Amos lists the various flowers in this garden. There is a strong Garden of Eden analogy here. The only real chorus comes in with a change over to synths and guitars. Tori sings about being free to follow her life without others needing more from her. The B section of the song is a sharp change to a limbo-like state. Canton’s guitar work and Amos’s synths make for a much darker lost vibe. A call back to dividing Canaan parallels a sort of loss of autonomy from the others around her.
Despite its 8-minute length, I really enjoy the overall feeling. It’s a little abstract but not too obtuse to understand.
“Spring Haze” as a dual tone. You have one side softer in the verses and another that gets a bit more chaotic in the chorus. There’s a change of arms between the piano and synths and guitars between these sections. It’s echoed well in this foreboding feeling that comes to fruition in the chorus.
I get this need to work past this wall Tori’s partner has built up, “and I found out where my edge is/ and it bleeds into where you resist/ and my only way, way out, is to go/ so far in.” This seems to be the catalyst for issues that come up in the chorus and bridge. She highlights her piano playing quite well here, with several places that bring it out beautifully.
The album ends with the heart-aching “1000 Oceans.” Tori wrote the song after her father-in-law’s passing in 1999:
“They were so incredibly close that “1000 Oceans” seemed to be the only thing that could bring him out of his sadness. He’d come out and sit and say, “Could you play that one, the ocean song?” It became about feeling close to people you can’t reach, seeing this depth of love for this person who was gone.”
This is probably one of my favorites on the album. She mixes this synth string sample with her piano, bringing a tangible ache. The song is clearly about loss. I can read it both from the perspective of feeling the sorrow of losing a loved one and the pain of watching someone you love go through that. It’s hard not to hear the lines, “I can’t believe that/ I would keep/ keep you from flying/ and I would cry 1000 more/ if that’s what it takes to/ sail you home”, and not get a bit choked up. It’s that sense of wanting to desperately hold on to someone, yet knowing you must let them go.
It’s a beautiful send-off to the album.
This album is a sort of bookend to an era for Amos.
It marks the end of her plugged electronic sound and nears the end of her time on Atlantic records. The themes of love, lust, self-actualization, and conflict match well with where Tori was at this point in her life. We’re coming out of the darkness of Choirgirl and rising upwards into the new role as a wife and changed woman.
I quite enjoy the majority of the album. It’s shorter, coming in at just around 47 minutes, but it never overstays its welcome. The live album, Still Orbiting has some truly wonderful takes from the Plugged tour.
I highly recommend listening to “Precious Things,” “Sugar,” and “The Waitress” as they are almost definitive takes on these songs to me (especially “The Waitress”). My favorites of the album are:
- “Bliss”
- “Juarez”
- “Concertina”
- “Lust”
- “Josephine”
- “1000 Oceans”
My overall rating: 8.0 out of 10.0.
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