Among several promising new releases this week, cool people are most excited about Tori Amos and her American Doll Posse. I'm a sucker for this freaky preacher's kid, but you have to take her with a grain of salt. On the one hand, she wrote "Crucify" and "God" and "Spark." On the other hand, she doesn't seem to put much stock in basic pop music communication, and tends to become willfully obscure musically and lyrically to the point of disappearing up her own belly button with records that can't mean much to anyone but herself.
This album apparently is supposed to be some kind of a concept album voiced by no less than five alter egos, her doll posse. There are apparently separate MySpace pages and blogs for each character. This is just the kind of arcane foolishness that has frequently overwhelmed her great talents as an actual songwriter and musician. On the other hand, a song title like "Fat Slut" promises the more direct attack that might likely result in a fine song. I'm just saying, a good hook and a comprehensible lyrical point will do you more good than a MySpace blog for "Pip" or "Isabel."
Plus, she's got some properly disdainful liberal political commentary in tracks like the opening "Yo George." "Is this just the madness of King George/You have the whole nation on all fours." One need not hear the musical execution of a disrespectful and condescending denunciation of Chimpy McHitler such as this to see that it's obviously an Important Artistic Statement.
Joan Armatrading has written a lot of great songs over the years, though she's never sold near the records that an obvious impersonator like Tracy Chapman has. Ms Armatrading is generally considered some range of a singer-songwriter type, but the new Into the Blues is just that - featuring her electric blues guitar playing on 13 original compositions.
Warren Zevon has a new album of recently re-discovered 30 year old song demos called Preludes. About half of them appear to be solo piano performances, and half of them full band arrangements. This album sounds particularly promising on a couple of levels. For starters, there are at least a half dozen song titles here that I don't recognize.
Beyond that, Zevon's songs were not necessarily served that well in the early years by the slick Jackson Browne LA studio production sound. I've been digging on the re-mastered Stand in the Fire live album lately, and it strikes me that nearly every one of those performances is stronger than the more well known album version.
![The Best of Elvis Costello: The First 10 Years [DIGIPACK]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/414IIw19r6L._SL120_.jpg)
Article comments
1 - Mat Brewster
"Self-promotion and links to one's own site(s) is not allowed."
-Blogcritics Policy
Glad to see everybody follows the rules.
2 - Al Barger
Dear Mat- I've got a big site with a lot of relevant stuff. Folks interested in Tori Amos, for example, might likely be interested in my related essays and photo galleries.
On the other hand, some punk ass hata with no website that anyone would give a rat's ass about probably should not be wasting time and server space with the keystrokes to put in worthless links - or stories, for that matter.
3 - Tom Johnson
"Self-promotion and links to one's own site(s) is not allowed."
-Blogcritics Policy
Um, what the hell is the point of Blogcritics if we aren't allowed to point to things on our own blogs? That might just be one of the dumbest rules I've seen on BC.
4 - Eric Olsen
The policy is against gratuitous self-linking and promotion - the issue is balance and reasonableness.
Every writer is promoting him/herself with every article they write for BC. Please recall that every story has two automatic links links back to the writer's site, plus however many links they put in their author's bio - so in Al's case there are 7 links back to his site in every article. He is hardly link deprived.
I would say, though, that if a writer hosts pics on his/her own site, there is certainly nothing wrong with linking the pics back to the site - such as a a pic hosting site as Flickr requires. In addition, readers interested in these artists may very well be interested in Al's galleries of those artists, further justifying the pic links.
5 - Mat Brewster
I'm confused on the policy then. It explicitly states that linking directly back to your blog in the article content is verboten. It also states that more than three links in the author bio is forbidden.
Yet Al routinely breaks these rules and gets away with it.
My problem isn't so much with the links, but that certain people seem to be able to break them and nothing is said or done about it.
I realize there is a difference in linking back to your blog blindly, and linking to something quasi-relevant to the article at hand, but this difference is not stated in the policy.
6 - Al Barger
Brother Olsen- Thank you for that clarification and amplification. I try to provide useful value in links to any website. Mr Brewster is either practicing for a law degree with his curious hata's antipathy to links in my story, or he's really not got much to do with his time.
Since he's so interested in requiring justification of my links, I'll note that each of the photos link to artist archives. The Warren Zevon section includes several essays and 100 photos. The Tori Amos link includes three essays and 50 photos. The Elvis Costello link will get you two dozen+ essays and about 200 photos.
And thanks for asking.
7 - Suzan
What is the song Fat Slut about?