I knew a girl who wrote
'Silent all these years'
Where is she?
We too asked ourselves, where did that girl go who in just a few years changed songwriting forever with her small earthquakes. After the very thunderous falls of the current millennium, we welcomed the newfound composure started with Deutsche Grammophon and evolved into the good “Unrepentant Geraldines”, leveling out, however, on a prudent and lazy sufficiency in the following years.
In this scenario of limited expectations, how can we not react with renewed fear to the news of a titanic event concept of seventeen tracks? A declared political invective, territory rarely congenial to Newton's redhead, accompanied by imagery fantasy populated by reptilian demons, sacred figures, rebellious communities and mythological transformations.
Yet, from the first listens, “In Times Of Dragons” lets something profoundly different emerge. Not so much for the renewed ambition of the project but for the feeling of finally being faced with a truly inspired and heartfelt work. The atmosphere is leaden, oppressive, often painful; the compositions stretch into circular structures, rhythmic rides and evocative drifts that ask the listener for patience, but return new details and connections in his labyrinth with each passage.
All Tori Amos albums have a conceptual component, but rarely has this been exhibited with such premeditated narrative evidence. The worldbuilding of “In Times Of Dragons” revolves around a protagonist trapped under the rule of a tyrannical reptilian husband, forced to confront desire, shame, repression and the loss of her identity. Community queeroppressed female figures, Irish mythology and Christian symbolism intertwine in a story that can certainly be read in a political key between authoritarian drifts, erosion of civil rights and isolation of the truth embodied by the figure of Cassandra.
The only breaking point with the allegory is granted to the most politically explicit song: the ballad “Ode To Minnesota” finds its place in the tracklist at the last moment after the killing of Renée Good and Alex Pretti during Ice operations in the American state, acutely contrasting the cold of repression with the fire of change (“Ice breathes in Fire's wind”).
In reality, the concept finds its true core in the female body and its transformations: becoming a woman, wife, mother and facing the difficult relationship with time and its challenges. Saint Teresa of Avila, the witch hunts, Saint Cecilia: all these figures end up converging in a reflection on female desire and the fear of losing her voice, in both a metaphorical and literal sense. When Tori sings “With St. Cecilia whispering: 'Without a voice he won't hear you scream'”, she seems to appeal to the patroness of musicians to face her personal drama, the most terrible for a singer: the loss of the extension of the past under the blows of menopause, as confided recently when announcing the world tour. The concept thus it also becomes profoundly autobiographical in comparison with his own artistic image.
The strength of the album lies precisely in the coherence with which these contents blend with the musical solutions. In the most confusing episodes of his recent past, the themes almost seemed like pretexts to justify unresolved compositions; here, however, every sound choice contributes to giving substance to the narrative. The menacing chords of “Shush” immediately open a scenario of discomfort and suffocating control, while “St Teresa” envelops the listener in warm and sensual synths that transform the mystical ecstasy of the saint into an almost carnal experience. “Gasoline Girls”, driven by Evans' bass and the dynamic Chamberlain's drums, instead finds a perfect balance between muscular rock and community spirit, embodying the wild freedom of its brotherhood of marginalized bikers.
Even the most eccentric moments finally manage to find a credible narrative function. The crooked vaudeville of “Fanny Faudrey” avoids the disastrous caricatural effect of certain past experiments, while the laughter shared with daughter Tash lightens up ahead of the delicate “Strawberry Moon”. Splendid waltz in the moonlight, it recalls episodes like “Not The Red Baron” and demonstrates the singer-songwriter's alchemy with the now vocally mature Hawley who supports her as in the past, this time with appreciable results.
Throughout the album, references to the past resurface: the nocturnal atmospheres of “Boys For Pele”, the setting on the road of “Scarlet's Walk”, certain harmonious fragments, images or textual quotes that seem to openly dialogue with their own artistic history. However, the undeniable self-referentiality does not appear as a mere fan service but it is functional to the theme, evoking the recovery of one's lost identity.
What is especially surprising is the measure with which the American artist balances a sound material that is as vast as it is risky. Recent productions – even in the most successful episodes – often left a bad taste in the mouth of an overly domestic management. Several times on these pages, the use of an external production that could facilitate better selection work has been hoped for. Despite insisting on self-production in her studio in Cornwall, supported by the usual suspects, this time we find in her a now forgotten stylistic rigor. The harpsichord reappears sipped with theatrical intelligence without giving in to temptation revivalthe strings support without overpowering, husband Mark Hawley's guitars remain contained and functional. Even the creaks of the Bosendorfer, the “tlak!” of the release of the harpsichord keys, the beating of the sticks or small noises deliberately left in direct contact contribute to creating a lively and physical sound, almost live.
The monumental duration of the work can be intimidating, which would certainly have benefited from greater synthesis, but unlike in the past you almost never have the sensation of being faced with fillers that ruin the emotional tension. Some passages don't flow properly – the bridge of “Veins” remains unnecessarily redundant – but they are flaws in a record that finds memorable impulses and evocative capacity along its path.
Moments such as the wall of sound that overwhelms “Shush” when the word “meat” is pronounced, the sudden entry of the harpsichord in “Provincetown”, the plucking of the harp in the background in “Song Of Sorrow” or the piano acceleration at the start (and conclusion) of “Tempest” restore a dramatic power that we have not found in her and with such continuity for decades.
Yet the real summit comes in the final bars. “Blue Lotus” probably represents the compositional peak of the entire work: a sinuous ballad on Rhodes keyboards with a very refined chorusembellished with an eighteenth-century harpsichord. Chamberlain's extraordinary rhythmic sensitivity drives the piece's majestic fugue. Here Tori Amos' new timbre finds full expression. Serious, rough, less inclined to virtuosity but determined to explore the lower register with personality and research, freeing itself of some mellifluous excesses and acquiring weight and depth.
The keystone of the song comes together in the following “Stronger Together”. concept with another successful duet with Tash. A song which, although not reaching the peaks of the two among which it is placed, offers a functional transition towards the grand finale of “23 Peaks”, the indisputable emotional pinnacle of the album. The suspended and almost celestial synthetic orchestrations accompany Amos' song towards the impervious Crazy Mountains of Montana in a finale that manages to be epic, imaginative and devastating.
The cinematic outcome of the journey does not allow half measures: surviving does not mean eliminating pain but accepting suffering as an inevitable part of one's change.
But the truth
The truth is, darling one
You will suffer
They'll grow back every time
Because you need
You just need to accept
That this will be
This will be
When the voice breaks in the last verse, the song betrays its genesis live and far from a cold recording studio, revealing the secret of its magic and an emotional truth that would not have disfigured in one of his four great masterpieces of the nineties.
The terrible and cruel price paid to the tyranny of the time could have destroyed any artist. Tori Amos faced it after a career where she was lost and artistically contradicted several times. When few would have bet on her anymore, in an increasingly ruthless era towards the weak and people in difficulty, she decided that she would not remain silent.
At the end of this journey of the hero of a thousand faces, she is not the woman she once was, but a transformed and reinvigorated artist, author of the most convincing, urgent and important work of her last 25 years.
12/05/2026
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
