Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Where the waters ebb and flow, where the sea fills the ocean and crashes against the dynamic coast and the jagged rocks where wreckers once lay in waiting, there is the sense of the timeless, a prospect and unveiling of the merging eternal beauty which for the most part does not have a counterpart on land, except perhaps where the rugged yet feminine landscape lends itself to creativity and myth, of wonder and fierce allusion, for it is in the ocean where we look deep within ourselves and see the everlasting depths, and the strange waves that drive us.
Ocean To Ocean, the 16th studio album to be released by Tori Amos, is a recording not only inspired by the recent events that have placed its mortality and own stamp on the activities and mind set of humanity, but also the time and setting to which Ms. Amos, arguably one of the most gifted and preciously guarded piano players/composers/lyric writers of the last 30 years, has inhabited as she produces songs that match, that reflect the two sides of the world in which she may consider home.
The ocean, the deep and barely touched by human scientific minds, but which we have all perhaps spoiled by our actions, is all that separates Cornwall, arguably the most mysterious and myth laden county in England, and that of the Americas, a puddle between friends, a vast swathe of common language often side-lined between presidents and ministers, to which in this case are given boundless beauty, of respect and the ultimate celebration if you will of the eternal femininity and the rugged crags and soft inlets of both the far southwestern edge of England, and that of the birth place of Tori Amos.
Deep within this sonically superb recording, involving tracks such as the outstanding Devil’s Bane, Swim To New York State, Spies, 29 Years, Metal Water Wood, and the album title track, Ocean To Ocean, thereis a sense of unhindered angst raging against the sorrow of time passing, of the hurricane pounding its fists against the thought of unbreakable solid rock, and it is one that captures the sheer drama that Tori Amos has always shown to exert in the studio, or live on the stage.
Ocean To Ocean is the feminine heart and soul holding the fragile mind of masculinity and showing another way to view distance, to witness time, and creating a bond that traverse such unthought miles; an album of exquisite taste and flavour, and one that sits proudly in the pantheon of work by the maestro.
Ian D. Hall