Tori Amos: Ocean To Ocean (Black Vinyl)

“This is a record about your losses and how you deal with them,” is how Tori Amos describes her new album for 2021. “Ocean To Ocean” is the name of the album, Amos’ 16th long player and the follow-up to 2017’s “Native Invader.”

During the Corona crisis, the U.S. musician, like many of her peers, found herself in a personal crisis, a difficult time with new challenges. But she found a musical way out, “Fortunately, if you’ve lived long enough, you can realize that you don’t feel like the mother you want to be, the wife you want to be, the artist you want to be. I realized that to change that, you have to write from the place you’re in. I was in my own private hell, so I said to myself, well, you write from there – you’ve done it before …,” Amos said.

And so the 58-year-old wrote and recorded the album at the Lockdown in Cornwall, where she lives. She found further inspiration in her fascination with the county’s landscapes and ancient myths, plus her songwriting responded to the January 2021 riots at the U.S. Capitol.

The result is her most personal album in years, a universal story about hitting rock bottom and renewing oneself. And for an album made under these conditions, two things in particular are remarkable – the rich stylistic variety, ranging from tango to wide-screen romance, and the big-heartedness of the songs, which almost seem like a series of love letters to family members present and absent, according to a description on her website.

If you want to get an idea yourself, you can already pre-order the CD “Ocean To Ocean” now. Record fans, however, will have to be patient a little longer. The vinyl release is scheduled for January 28, 2022.