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2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Not Scarlet's Walk, but okay... Oct 18, 2009
Funnily, I would say I am one of TA's biggest supporters. I've always liked her music, the fact that she does not adhere stubbornly to the 'rules' I learned in music appreciation class at uni and her sometimes very unorthodox lyrics; all these points have charmed me to no end in the past... though, not so much this time with Abnormally Addicted to Sin.
I have never been a 'like every other song on the album' kinda girl, yet I find that is nearly entirely the case here. I find the best way to describe this particular album is 'hit and miss', as some of the songs, tract 2, Welcome to England, tract 4, flavour, tract 6, Maybe California and here is my exception to the like only the 'evens', with tract 13, Mary Jane which are TA all the way-- imaginative, emotive and contemplative. I 'like' a few others like Lady in Blue and Ophelia, but they only deserve honourable mention for a few well written verses and nice chords here and there.
I would say though that TA has missed the plot with this album (IMHO)-- seems to me there are vestiges of her original style and inspiration despite her music going in some rather different directions now with Abnormally Attracted to Sin. Im not too sure what the future may hold for any new music she may write, but my indifference to this current album may well preclude any future full album purchases.
My advice? Sample her music and then seriously consider buying individual MP3s. I hate to say it (and I hope Im wrong here), but I think the days of albums such as Under the Pink, Crucify and To Venus and Back are long gone for us die hard boy and girl fans. Its sad, but here we are nonetheless.
In my mind she has still given me endless joy and comfort with all other albums up until around Scarlet's Walk, so for that I still maintain she is one of the best living female vocalist around.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 The most consistent effort since "To Venus and Back" Oct 11, 2009
In the midst of such volley of criticism, I feel the need to redress an imbalance. This album is Tori's tautest, most exciting effort in (exactly) a decade. Many a fan has noticed (mostly with dismay) the change in direction in her music after "To Venus and Back", an abrupt change whose somewhat disheartening harbinger was an entire album of covers, "Strange Little Girls". What distinguished her subsequent output was a situation whereby diminishing melodic inventiveness was made up for (as we have seen happen so many times with lesser artists) by an inflation in para-musical aspects: the underlying "concept", the production, the duration, all of which became rather sprawling and overblown.
As of 2000, in other words, Tori began to sound--surprisingly--like somebody else. More specifically, in my opinion, she began to sound like Sheryl Crow on a good day (nothing wrong with that, except that we're talking about Tori Amos here, a unique artist whose first stunning string of 5 masterpieces inured listeners--unfairly, no doubt-- to expect excellence as a matter of course). The softer, folkier, more upbeat, mainstream sound which permeated "Beekeper" and "Scarlett" I felt only skimmed the surface of her reservoir of talent.
The albums, mind you, were not bad by any normal standard (not even the least of them, "Beekeeper"): the point is, perhaps, that they could have easily been made by somebody else. They ceased to be unmistakably Tori's, as her uniqueness only surfaced in glimpses and twists, diluted over an ever-lengthening landscape of not-so-essential songs enslaved to a fastidious, often Byzantine "concept" arc.
A return to form was announced by American Doll Posse. The editing laxity was still rampant, but her Sheryl Crow routine (enriched by echoes of Juliana Hatfield, among others) reached heights that Sheryl herself could never have attained. And there was a lot of Tori-ness to it too, more so than in the previous two albums, so things were indeed looking up. (She is indeed one of those artists who draw their musical strength from their dark side, rather than their sunny one: and in Posse, luckily, the dark side is back: which means, thank goodness, no more bees and vineyards!)
And now comes "Abnormally Attracted to Sin". At first sight, the 70+ minutes spell an alarming continuity with her interminable predecessors. But after the second listen, the sonic landscape reveals a tightness that had been missing since the astounding "Choirgirl Hotel", and the melodic inventiveness is back around those apices. There is hardly a dispensable song in the lot (one or two tops: and, let's be frank, not even her early masterpieces were untouchable in this respect), and so many are excellent ones, worthy of the old Tori. The lyrics are marvelously hermetic, the voice mangles away at English phonetics (who else could make "Tennessee" sound like "Genocide"?), warping and dragging vowels like she's channelling Billie Holiday, and the old INTENSITY is back--although, as some have noticed, further removed, and a bit over-rehearsed, even antiseptic. But we can hardly expect from Tori the same spontaneity she exhibited 20 years ago. Or maybe we should say "spontaneity effect". For, let's not forget that spontaneity is mostly achieved through hard work. Despite what the film "Amadeus" would like us to believe, even Mozart was known to tweak, fix, tinker, and agonize over his best work.
To get to the selection: As one perceptive reviewer put it, "Give" is probably the strongest opening since "Spark" (from "Choirgirl"), with a serpentine pentatonic streak running through it. "England" is quietly beautiful, "Vine" deliciously twisted and dark. "Flavor" is ok, perhaps a little too conventional, "Dying" sounds straight out of the best part of "Posse", "Maybe California" is one of her standard intimate ballads, "Police" is a real tour de force, infectious, dark, and rich in melodic and rhythmic invention, "That guy" (the most Billie Holiday-esque) moves me to tears, "Curtain" and "Fire" are sinuous enough to sustain interest throughout, "Sin" gets under your skin (no pun intended), "500" is maybe dispensable (meaning: it could have been on "Beekeper"), "Mary Jane" is the old let's-expose-the-obscene-puritan-underbelly Tori back on top, "Ophelia is majestic, and "Lady in Blue" possesses the timeless, hypnotic, monumental beauty of an old Blues song (like Sinatra's lunar rendition of "Baby won't you please come home" from "Where Are You"): what an amazing way to end a great album.
In my opinion, then, "Abnormally" is a sure-footed return to form after a decade of uneven, meandering, generic music. Of course, as we set out to write reviews, we should never forget how extremely subjective a listening experience is bound to be. My highly unprofessional yardstick is the following: an album is really exceptional if it manages to bring tears to my eyes at least twice (by the time of my second or third listen, that is: and I'm not talking about an emotional upheaval brought on by words per se, but rather by a certain melodic/harmonic progression, like the piano flourish that introduces the bridge "You gotta bring your own sun" in "Welcome to England", or the breathtaking "Make up to break up" chorus in "That Guy"). Those two episodes alone are worth--if we want to be prosaic--the price of the album. Enjoy!
2 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Listen to it for free on her Myspace instead Sep 12, 2009
There's really nothing special about this cd. I didn't think it was quite as good as Doll Posse or Beekeeper. I'm not saying it was bad, some of the songs are good, but as an album it was lacking. Listen to it for free before you decide to buy it. If you've been a Tori fan this long, you'll probably find some song worth buying this cd for, but as a whole it will leave you longing for the next one and hoping it's better. Hopefully her Christmas album will be more interesting than this. And please don't buy the deluxe version, the "visuallettes" weren't really that good, they're nothing like her earlier music videos, and there's nothing very inspiring about them.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Proof That Music Evolves According to the Beat of Life Sep 12, 2009
Yes, Tori's music has evolved into something far different from her first album, but that's life. She's switched it up a bit with this album and she's offering us a fresh taste of something old. Her music reflects what's going on in her life and in the world. She continues to tackle the same subjects over and over again, but that's her point. She does it beautifully and poetically.
When I listen to the songs on Abnormally Attracted to Sin, I'm not listening to music, but art. I know that sounds kind of airy-fairy, but this woman is more than a songwriter. Who else dares to express themselves the way that she does? She's very honest, yet ambiguous with this album. Listening to it will definitely make you think.
My favorite songs include:
1. Welcome to England.
2. Fire To Your Plane
3. Curtain Call
I'm still listening to the album almost every week, so it'll take additional time for me to ingest it all. Usually it takes about six to seven months for one of her albums to really sink in. Nevertheless, I like what has done here. I highly recommend it.
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
Tori Stays on Target Aug 22, 2009
Lots of people are moaning about this album on these pages. And I am honestly not sure why. Tori's voice sounds terrific, the lyrics are intelligent and the music is rich and melodious as well as interesting, colorful, and diverse. All on one CD clocking in at over 72 minutes! Who else bothers to do this these days - or can? I certainly don't want Tori to start kicking out 40 minute albums like every other recording "artist". She has more to offer and thankfully does so with a rare and rewarding consistency. Is the texting generation now so attention-span challenged to actually consider this a liability? Pitiful. And as for the ad-hominem attacks, they are utterly pointless and not worth rebuttal. I have every Tori Amos album and they are all excellent on their own terms. AAtS is no exception. In fact I have listened to it now for the 7th time in the 4 days since I bought it. So if you have found immersion in a Tori Amos record in the past a pleasing experience you should expect nothing less from this piece of work because the girl has still got it - in spades!
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