Details
Track Listing
1. Pretty Good Year
2. God
3. Bells For Her
4. Past the Mission
5. Baker Baker
6. Wrong Band, The
7. Waitress, The
8. Cornflake Girl
9. Icicle
10. Cloud on My Tongue
11. Space Dog
12. Yes, Anastasia
Album Notes
Personnel: Tori Amos (piano, vocals, organ); Trent Reznor, Merry Clayton (vocals); Steve Caton (guitar), Steve Clayton (guitar, mandolin); John Philip Shenale (organ, keyboards); George Porter Jr. (bass); Carlo Nuccio (drums); Paulinho Da Costa (percussion); Eric Rosse, Paul McKenna (programming).
String personnel: Ezra Klinger, Nancy Roth, John Wittenberg, Francine Walsh, Michael Harrison, Chris Reutinger (violins), Jimbo Ross, Cynthia Morrow, John Acevedo (violas), Nancy Stein-Ross, Dane Little, Melissa Hasin (cellos), Dominique Genova (bass).
Engineers: Paul McKenna, John Beverly Jones, Eric Rosse.
Recorded at The Fishhouse, New Mexico and Westlake Studios, Los Angeles, California.
UNDER THE PINK was nominated for Best Alternative Music Performance in the 37th Annual Grammy Awards.
It's been a long time since an artist as quirky and defiantly personal as pianist-vocalist Tori Amos exploded upon the pop charts. With her debut effort LITTLE EARTHQUAKES, Amos avoided popular trends and convenient pigeonholes: all at once she evokes an era of thrush-like sopranos, folkish confessionals, and daring new wave artists. The resulting music on her second Atlantic release, UNDER THE PINK, is brimming over with innocence and sensuality, spirituality and heresy. That she is able to confront all of these contradictions, let alone try to resolve them, makes for remarkably powerful music.
In fact, UNDER THE PINK owes much of its potency to the feeling that we're watching Amos grow up before our very eyes. The daughter of a Methodist preacher, Tori Amos was a child prodigy on the piano, gifted with an exceptionally quick ear and a solid rhythmic feel. However, while pursuing her formal studies, she ran dead up against the rigidity of classical protocol, and her teachers tried to break her rather than channel her talents. Some of the emotional push and pull of this early artistic catharsis peeps through in the way Amos and co-producer Eric Rosse approach the multiplicity of piano sounds which inhabit UNDER THE PINK--sounds which symbolize the many feminine rites of passage depicted throughout the album.
There are the child-like, half-remembered musings of "Bells For Her" and "Icicle" ("I think the good book is missing some pages"), and the vigorous attack of "The Waitress," "Cornflake Girl" and "God" ("God sometimes you just don't come through/Do you need a woman to look after you"). Here Amos' sense of alienation, rage and betrayal is echoed in offbeat rock textures and swooping vocal refrains suggesting the work of fellow traveller Kate Bush on THE DREAMING. Elsewhere, her vibrant vocal range and lush harmonies suggest early Joni Mitchell and even the ethnic-new age melange of Enya. The characters in her songs, however, are neither flower children nor navel gazers, but strong, vulnerable women coming to terms with their needs and longings in an often chilly world. UNDER THE PINK maps the inner journey of post-modern women and signals the arrival of a singular new singer-songwriter.
Industry Reviews
Included in Rolling Stone's Essential Recordings of the 90's.
Rolling Stone (05/13/1999)
Ranked #2 in the Village Voice's 1993 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll.
Village Voice (03/01/1994)
6 - Good.
NME (02/05/1994)
...Hardly in the last 20 years has any artist of any real nerve conspired to create an album quite so edgily designed around pianoforte and sotto voce as [UNDER THE PINK]....throwing in a sensationalist lyric or weird chord change that suddenly incarnates the emotional undercurrent of the song as it removes it from easy mainstream listening....
Musician (02/01/1994)
3 1/2 Stars - Good Plus - ...The album is focused, the lyrics quirky and personable, the melodies eccentric enough to entice and simple enough to be catchy. These qualities--and her emotional fearlessness--make Tori Amos a musical find to treasure....
Rolling Stone (02/24/1994)
3 1/2 Stars - Good Plus - ...The album is focused, the lyrics quirky and personable, the melodies eccentric enough to entice and simple enough to be catchy. These qualities--and her emotional fearlessness--make Tori Amos a musical find to treasure....
Rolling Stone (02/24/1994)
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