I'm in my war / you're in yours/ do we fight for peace as they take another piece of us

Yep, there's finally a new Tori Amos album. I'm finally giving it a listen at work on a Saturday, when I am free to blast sound around the lab. The frantic need to shoehorn a full band into her songs is mostly gone, giving us musical composition that is a nice return to the lushness of the Under the Pink days. One or two songs about her daughter, naturally. A few more digs at the current US government that made Scarlet's Walk so fun. And plenty of little puzzle songs that made her earliest work a mental exercise at times. Me like.

She's playing smaller venues again, too. Her stadium phase was a big disappointment. She's playing Royce Hall right in UCLA in April, but tickets for her performances continue to do that thing where they sell out in two minutes. Grr.