The acclaimed American singer-songwriter and pianist’s 18th album in a 35-year career is a grandiose, powerful 17-track album of odyssey and allegory around politics, power and feminist resistance, fuelled by the current state of her nation, set from the view of fictionalised marriage to a dangerous billionaire and an escape across the country with a narrative twist. “This is a metaphorical story about the fight for democracy over tyranny,” she explains, and the dragons in question are the monstrous, egostisical power-grabbers that almost echo the notorious “lizard people” of conspiracy theorists (such as that of David Icke), though Amos, surely, is strictly on metaphorical territory. That said, she pulls no punches on the dangers at play, echoing 1994’s acclaimed Cornflake Girl - “this is not really happening? You bet your life it is.” On opener Shush, there’s the instant effect of those compelling piano chords, and shocking shut-down detail of the “lizard demon” billionaire shutting down his wife: “Southern girls know what it means … You put a finger on those beautiful lips / We both know what they're good for, don't we?” As Amos explains: “He represents what we’re dealing with right now. He sees congressmen, senators, and even probably presidents, as people who answer to him and other billionaires, who don’t think you and I should vote. He’s trying to develop the kind of feudal system we had hundreds of years ago. But it doesn’t look like it once did. We don’t look like we’re in the trenches, in the muck. We have all the cool, digital devices now. So it looks different. But it has the same philosophy.” The title track, with a slow, compelling delivery, sets out the scenario of living with the monster. But the irony of the narrative is that while the fictionalised Amos encounters a variety of experiences during her escape, including Gasoline Girls, a collective of women who “tend the fire” and stand together in defiance she ultimately begins to transform into a dragon too, seduced, but also divided by wealth, as expressed in the final track, 23 Peaks: “I need your help / To change me back / Back into the woman / I want to be, so this dragon / Half-dragon, half-woman thing.”
Musically Amos uses her instrument with power and emotional pull and her daughter, Natashya Hawley, features heavily too, co-writes and sings on several tracks, including Veins, a call-and-response between mother and daughter questioning what emotional and moral inheritance we pass down. Penulatimate track Stronger Together is another powerful, compelling track of mutual support in the face of adversity. A long album at 76 minutes, its a big listen but along the way there’s light and shade and contrast, with for example light jaunty relief in the nimble, catchy Fanny Faudrey, in contrast to the very serious and important reference to ICE on preceding track Ode To Minnesota. But at the centre of this story and album, but as much in its musical strength is Provincetown, setting forward the great adventure in this allegorical world: “The witch from Brooklyn said "You need your dragon kin/ Only they can save you now / 'Cause you're turning into one of them/ So you'll head down south on a turbo/ Bike with the gasoline girls/ 'Cause back there in a mountain town/ Is your daughter/ Then you'll find a high priestess/ Who will lead you through a vampire/ Reunion down in New Orleans". This is Kate Bush territory, but in Amos’s own unflinching style. Out on Fontana/ Universal.
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