Albums by this artist

To Venus And Back (1999)

From The Choirgirl Hotel (1998)

Little Earthquakes (1991)

Tori Amos

From The Choirgirl Hotel

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» KATHARINE KELLY | STAFF WRITER

Tori Amos From The Choirgirl Hotel Atlantic, 1998 RiYL: Kate Bush, Fiona Apple, Tim Buckley, Rickie Lee Jones

She's never exactly been a pop star, but for the first time in her career, Tori Amos has here released an album that could make her one. From The Choirgirl Hotel, Tori's fourth album, finds the singer straying from her original me-and-my-piano sound, opting instead toward full-out musical accompaniment -- a decision that might just bring her a more mainstream audience.

Both the writhingly beautiful "Black-Dove" and sad but sing-song "Playboy Mommy" find Tori in much the same place that she left her last album, Boys For Pele -- emotionally-charged performances produced with little more than a piano and a microphone. The rest of the album, however, offers a surprisingly different array of sounds.

The sexy hip-hop groove of "Cruel" makes it the album's most likely candidate for a dance-club remix, and "She's Your Cocaine" is probably about as rock-and-roll as Tori will ever get. In a somewhat bizarre move, "Jackie's Strength," a whispery ballad about weddings, sounds like it could have been an '80s prom hit. That is, of course, if it weren't full of typical Amos truisms such as, "You're only popular with anorexia." And that's what's so great about Amos: Her sound may change, but her ferocity remains.

KATHARINE KELLY |