February 2012 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• Little Earthquakes
• Boys for Pele
• From the Choirgirl Hotel
• Scarlet's Walk

Jimmy Barnes - Flesh and Wood
Kate Bush - 50 Words for Snow
Marc Cohn - The Rainy Season
The Dissociatives - The Dissociatives
Peter Gabriel - So
Genesis - We Can't Dance
Gomez - In Our Gun
Radiohead - Kid A
Radiohead - Hail to the Thief
Sting - ...Nothing Like the Sun
Talk Talk - The Colour of Spring
Tears for Fears - The Seeds of Love

Hmm, living in the 80s a fair bit...These lists really can surprise me sometimes.  For instance, I have this sense at the time of writing that I haven't listened to any Tori Amos for several weeks. And in fact I'm right, but I listened to several albums in the first half of February.

It's also interesting that Choirgirl is the last one I listened to, and I've listened to it at least once in each of the last 3 months after not having played it for almost half a year before that.  That's in no way because I started disliking it, but simply because it can be such a visceral and exhausting album to listen to. I'm most often drawn to it when in a dark, angsty mood and ready to let fly at the world.

I still rank it as Tori's most astonishing album, because of the way it rewrote the rules of what she was capable of.  No longer was her career 'merely' the story of a woman pouring her heart out at the keyboard. She was now in charge of much larger forces.

I listened to The Rainy Season a great deal during the month. I've said before that it's one of my favourite albums of all time, but I don't believe I've said why.  And it's because it's one of the most perfect small-scale albums I know.

Which might seem like a putdown, but it isn't.  Not everything should be grand and epic.  The Rainy Season is a collection of songs that resonates with small, intimate moments and domestic relationships. It's warm and affectionate, and a little sad as well. It feels like it belongs in a log cabin with a wood fire. And for me there isn't a false step anywhere.  Which is why, when a car chewed up my original cassette copy, I immediately went hunting for a CD version. I didn't want to be without it in my collection.