Tori Amos understands the theatre of survival. Her 18th album, ‘In Times of Dragons’ once again folds autobiography into allegory, wandering a mythic America where the lizard elite breathe fire over democracy’s dying embers. It’s a heavy conceit but a familiar one: Amos dramatises her inner life through strange roles, half‑witch, half‑oracle, always sitting at the piano as both witness and combatant.
Gasoline Girls is a notable highlight — a swaggering road hymn driven by a plinking Rhodes riff and the ghosts of her biggest hit, Cornflake Girl. It plays like freedom under a heat haze, Amos’s heroine finding grace in queer company. Later, Blue Lotus folds baroque filigree into more Rhodes warmth, one of the few moments where form and intention unite completely. Here, Amos finds the ambiguity that has often been the lifeblood of her art.
Elsewhere, it eludes her. Amos’s vocal, newly coarse and worldly, suits the scene-setting claustrophobia of the opener Shush, but while her syllables bite they also flatten.
She means every word, but there is little mystery to its skewering of the patriarchy and billionaire class — unlike Bob Dylan on ‘Street‑Legal’, who might tackle the same themes while floating above them, casually omniscient.
This might seem like a harsh comparison, but Ode to Minnesota nods specifically towards Dylan, invoking exile and mythic Americana. “The lakes are frozen mirrors for the men who can’t look in them,” Amos sings. It’s a fine line, even if the metaphor lands squarely where earlier Amos might have let it glide.
More broadly, ‘In Time of Dragons’ wrestles with its own earnestness. The production gleams, the performances compel, but the imagery can feel airless — slogan overtaking spell. Still, this is an artist who can turn trauma into vision. Amos remains fascinating when she stops naming her dragons and simply breathes their smoke.
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