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Los Angeles Times (US)
September 21, 2003

Tori Amos' 'autobiography'

Anyone who's followed Tori Amos' career wouldn't expect her to release a conventional "best of" album. And indeed, her coming "Tales of a Librarian: A Tori Amos Collection" is distinctive.

"It's the closest thing to an autobiography of this woman's life," Amos says, explaining that the anthology traces her own story and evolution. "It's about how she grew up in a religious household and then started playing with the Washington circuit in the hotel piano bars for congressmen, lobbyists, their rent boys and their call girls."

The album, due Nov. 18, will also feature two new songs, "Angel" ("my take on this time," she says) and "Snow Cherries From France" (a song she'd been working on for years), and two omitted from her 1990 solo debut, "Little Earthquakes." She's gone back to the original master tapes on all the tracks and in some cases done some rather significant revisions, to her thinking correcting some decisions that were made at the time.

"Someone said, 'Bury the strings in "Winter" because it won't be commerical.' And now I'm trying to preserve what was on tape, not necessarily what got released because of a decision that was made in 20 seconds at the time."

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