Tori Amos - Abnormally Attracted To Sin

Trying to quantify a Tori Amos record is a fairly redundant endeavour. She's pretty much the standard-bearer for contemporary female soloists and thus asking if she's still good at writing music of a genre she largely redefined is like asking whether a brick is good at being a brick. Abnormally Attracted To Sin is a collection of typically seamless excellence. There are plenty of dark, electronic beats involved this time around, but the album manages this without the usual pitfall of becoming cold and impersonal. Indeed there are songs on display that rank right up there with Amos's best, including the truly inspired Fast Horse and lyrically skewed Mary Jane, which could have sat comfortably on 1998's dazzling From the Choirgirl Hotel. With more compelling chord changes and understated moments of beauty and sorrow than a hundred of her acolytes, Tori Amos makes being this good seem almost effortless.