Send "Tori Amos " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Drownedinsound |
 Holiday albums are generally dismissed quite quickly. Even if one is to yield a holiday radio staple on a par with the Waitresses’ ‘Christmas Wrapping’ or Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas,’ (and let's face it, when did one do that?) it’s to be assumed that the rest of the album is little more than a cash cow. So much the worse in a year that has seen the release of Bob Dylan’s laughable Christmas in the Heart; all other artists are doomed to have mention of their seasonal project immediately succeeded by, 'Hey, have you heard about the Bob Dylan Christmas album?' If you doubt the veracity of this fact, try referencing any holiday music by a contemporary artist in conversation. That Tori Amos, ten albums and nearly 20 years into her career, should release a holiday themed record seems both obvious and curious. Midwinter Graces is only months behind Abnormally Attracted to Sin and the supporting world tour, so it’s not as though she needs to tide fans over while working on new material. But as devotees well know, Tori grew up a minister’s daughter, so it makes sense that she would celebrate the music she grew up with. What that celebration would sound like, however, could be anyone’s guess. This is, after all, the woman who brought us ‘Father Lucifer’ and once upon a time sang, "We both know it was a girl back in Bethlehem." But nothing on Midwinter Graces is so shocking or even cynical. The classic songs she has chosen to interpret largely cover the religious aspect of Christmas, though mentions of Jesus and Mary are fleeting rather than heavy handed....full text |
| Allmusic |
| She may be the daughter of a reverend, but Tori Amos never seemed the likeliest candidate for a Christmas album; she might sing about "God", but her music always seemed secular and never seasonal, but in a year that brought holiday albums by Bob Dylan and Sting, it makes perfect sense that Tori should deliver one, too. Amos' entry, Midwinter Graces, may be as unlikely as Dylan's, but it's closer in tenor to Sting's: it's deliberately reserved and chilly, capturing the wintriness of the season while studiously avoiding the joy. Tori reworks many familiar carols, tweaking lyrics and pushing them together into a medley, so they sound quite similar to the newly written tunes that comprise the rest of the record. Thanks to some familiar melodies, it can sometimes seem seasonally appropriate, but it always seems purely Tori, who has somehow managed to deliver an easy listening version of all her signatures in one tidy, not so-Christmasy, package....full text |
| Slantmagazine |
| or an artist who's made a career out of subverting Christian imagery, Tori Amos comes off surprisingly reverent on Midwinter Graces, her first holiday album. The singer-songwriter is pictured on the cover art ascending into the clouds with arms outstretched, like Christ resurrected, but even this visual is tame in comparison to what she might have done 15 years ago. Her output this decade has ranged from utterly banal (The Beekeeper) to passable (this year's Abnormally Attracted to Sin), her incisive skewering of the religion of her youth decidedly a thing of the past. One could assemble the ultimate anti-Christmas EP with songs from Tori's back catalogue ("Crucify," "God," "Icicle," and "Father Lucifer" among them), but the artist who once wrote about masturbating while her family sang Christmas hymns downstairs, and how God might just need some good pussy, is shockingly docile here. Midwinter is comprised of five secular originals and nine traditional holiday songs that have purportedly been given a new twist. On paper, the very idea should have had both Toriphiles and critics licking their lips, but aside from a hardly blasphemous pre-chorus ("Some say we have been in exile/What we need is solar fire") added to the Christmas carol "We Three Kings," re-titled "Star of Wonder," Tori doesn't really bring a whole lot to these classics lyrically. And only on the bonus track "Comfort and Joy," when she refers to the man behind the counter of a bagel café as if he's some exotic creature or muse, do we get a flash of the Tori we've come to know and love....full text |
Tori Amos lyrics
