I'm not sure I'd want Tori Amos as a girlfriend. I expect she'll get over that fact, given time, but the reason I've come to such a conclusion is that you'd never know what mood she was likely to be in from one day to the next. No sooner would you have adapted to her 'Silent All These Years' persona than she'd have suddenly turned into the 'Cornflake Girl', then before you knew where you were with that she'll have gone all 'Van Helden' on you and turned into a 'Professional Widow'.

Whilst it's good for any artist to be able to reinvent themselves from time to time, you can't help feeling that Amos's chameleon-like transitions over the years have made it challenging for all but the staunchest of fans to stick with her for any length of time. With that in mind, it's with a mixture of trepidation and curiosity that a new Tori Amos long player is to be explored.

'Midwinter Graces' sees Amos tackling the thorny genre of Christmas songs, reimagining some well-known standards as well as creating some of her own seasonal offerings. Taken at face value, the album is a fairly enjoyable collection, mildly cloying in parts but otherwise palatable enough, and were this by any other artist than Tori Amos it would be easy to write off as little more than a vaguely artistic cash-in. It is by Tori Amos though, and given the thematic intent of a lot of her previous material, taking this album at face value feels strangely uncomfortable.

If there is more to this collection of seemingly innocuous songs than meets the ear, deciphering what that might be is something that devoted fans will no doubt revel in but which is likely to leave the casual listener bemused. If there isn't and this is simply a collection of seasonal songs put together for no other reason than it's the time of year for it, then this kind of album coming from an artist such as Tori Amos just doesn't quite seem to fit.

6/10

By Philip Goodfellow