Gold Dust
| Tori Amos
Gold Dust
Gold Dust is the thirteenth solo studio album by American singer-songwriter Tori Amos, released on October 1, 2012 by Deutsche Grammophon and Mercury Classics. The album is produced by Amos with arrangements by long-time collaborator John Philip Shenale. Inspired by and following in a similar vein as Amos's previous effort, the classical music album Night of Hunters (2011), Gold Dust features some of her previously released alternative rock and baroque pop songs re-worked in an orchestral setting. The material for Gold Dust, consisting of songs selected by Amos spanning her entire catalogue from Little Earthquakes (1992) through Midwinter Graces (2009), was recorded with the Metropole Orchestra, conducted by Jules Buckley.-Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Music OMH
. . . these versions of Amos’s songs don’t really travel far from the originals. Granted, there’s a lot more room toexperiment when melding two styles as disparate as progressive houseand a classical orchestra, but nevertheless listening to Gold Dust does beg the question – pleasant as this exercise is, how much does it actually develop or improve what were some excellent songs to startoff with?
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BBC
Plusher, more refined versions of Amos’ more autobiographical tracks.
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Hot Sauce Reviews
If you, like me, have a big collection of Ms Amos’s records as well as bootleg mp3s of her concert performances, Gold Dust isn’t only redundant, it’s a sad testament of someone who was once amazing but is now phoning in.
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Montreal Gazette
It’s hard to figure out what Tori Amos’s 13th studio album really adds to the canon. While there’s no downside to hearing some of Amos’s best work again, Gold Dust leaves us with little more than a desire to go back to the source.
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God Is In The TV
This album may be ‘one for the fans’ but I really hope that it reaches a new audience, and allows people to see the immense musical abilities of Amos, in all their glory. Long may she reign.
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The Guardian
One of Tori Amos's ambitions was to record with an orchestra. Now she's done that with Gold Dust, a collection of her greatest hits rerecorded with Holland's 52-piece Metropole Orkest, . . . .
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University Observer
Piano, strings and vocals can only take you so far, though the album is still a thing of beauty some tracks lose more than they gain from the new format.In a Nutshell: If you want a break from pulsing house beats, this is a lovely piano-pop album to spend an hour with.
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Paste Magazine
Re-sculpting many of her best loved songs, the complexity of her musicality emerges from the intensity of the originals—as dynamics are truly sculpted and the songs take on new and often more ominous colors.
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AllMusic
While everyone will have her favorites -- or be disappointed about those that have been left out -- the arc of the album works quite well. . . . Gold Dust is another of Amos' dreams realized -- to record live with an orchestra -- and it is most certainly for her dedicated fans, who will no doubt find elements in these new versions to enjoy.
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Slant Magazine
There’s an intimacy to the album that fits well with the set’s most confessional material, but it doesn’t really work as a standalone project.
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PopMatters
Tori celebrates 20 years in the business with a fairly lacklustre reworking of old and new favourites recorded with the Metropole Orchestra.
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uDiscovermusic
Breathing new life into 20-year-old songs, Tori Amos’ classically inspired album ‘Gold Dust’ was a beautifully crafted work about storytelling and memory.
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American Songwriter
Produced by Amos, this lushly orchestrated set is at times equally compelling and dynamic, plus effectively demonstrates Amos’ acumen as a musician, vocalist, and tunesmith (a scarce commodity these days). The album also underscores the classical methodologies often hinted at in her previous works.
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The Digital Fix
Gold Dust serves as a good reminder of the quality of Amos’ back catalogue. It’s far from essential but breathes new life into familiar works.
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JamBase
Gold Dust is a personal journey through the Amos songbook that reaffirms the timelessness of her music.
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Off The Tracks
. . . I have a fourth Tori Amos album to recommend; it’s not a classic – it does not need to be for everyone (nor is it trying) but she’s released a good record. Something she hasn’t done in years. Sometimes good is good enough. And that’s what it feels like with Gold Dust.
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Independent
On Gold Dust, Tori Amos revisits her old songs in the company of Amsterdam's Metropole Orchestra. In some cases, as in "Cloud on My Tongue", the orchestrations serve as little more than swaddling blankets. But the more thoughtful rearrangements can be transformative . . . .
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METRO
Tori Amos’s Gold Dust is pleasant enough and beautifully delivered. Tori Amos’s Gold Dust features 14 orchestral recreations of her previous tracks but few of them are better than the originals.
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Super Deluxe Edition
Tori still sings beautifully, but there is definitely a more mature, contented tone to the performances. She is no longer the spikey, troubled single young woman of the early years and when she revisits the words and songs of that person it makes for interesting listening.
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Stereoboard
In spite of the album's undoubted qualities, any bold as brass reinvention is sadly missing. Structural changes are limited, the songs subserviently adhere to their templates and the most interesting aspect is Tori's fresh take on her vintage narratives.
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The Upcoming
Amos wants to return to her roots on this album and exhibit her proficiency as a classical musician. It is not anything hugely new, but for those who want to hear her music reinvented into a more sophisticated, conventional style, this album is for you.
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AV Club
Gold Dust’s strength comes from how invested Amos is in her older songs. She doesn’t just perform them, she empathizes with them. . . . Still, while anyone who lost touch with Amos over the years will certainly enjoy Gold Dust—and the sonic upgrades to some of her best songs are sublime—in the end, it’s not essential.
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Apple Music
While this album could be two or three times its actual length and still be leaving out something worth revisiting, the choices are inspired, . . . .
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Record Collector Magazine
While on the face of it the fire and fury of songs from her youth . . . might not appear to be natural bedfellows for soaring strings and Christmas carols, Amos, now a mother in her 40s, brings something new to her old songs in this beautifully crafted album about storytelling and memory.
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Boycoting Trends
Sublime songs, every one . . . and it’s always good to hear them, but the bolder orchestration can’t be said to enhance them significantly here. The problem, I think, is that Amos and Shenale haven’t allowed themselves to colour far enough outside the lines of the original arrangements of any of these tracks, with the result that they simply sound all-too-similar to their previous incarnations.
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Penny Black Music
The main point, however, is that Tori Amos, on 'Gold Dust' has managed to balance the lilting loveliness of her character-driven epics with a litany of expressive textures and it’s a compelling win win for all.
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Polari Magazine
Gold Dust is a cathartic journey through Amos’s mindmap and is a truly captivating and earnest affair. The powerful lyrics, the stunning orchestral arrangements and that beautiful, haunting voice form a superb testament to one of the most distinctive sonic architects of our time.
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Lyriquediscorde
On a whole this album is a beautiful collection of well-loved songs that are brought to life with some new flourish and perspective paint brushed across them.
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Just Another Magazine
It is hard not to compare reinventions to their predecessors. Amos has almost created an entirely new dialogue with her choice of tracks, but sometimes (and not surprisingly), some of the airs should not have been tampered.
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The Daily Nebraskan
Admittedly, what keeps “Gold Dust” from falling into the same category as all other best-of albums is the actual re-representation of familiar songs through the use of that honest-to-God orchestra she recorded with. They don’t come off pretentious so much as powerful. It sounds as though the songs are being carved into the side of a mountain – etched in stone – for time to remember.
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Stuff
Since Amos was hardly renowned for her stripped-bare sound back in the day, sometimes it's hard to hear exactly what the 50-odd extra instruments bring that's so very different - but since she's mined 10 of her past full-lengthers for tracks to cover, the result is an accomplished resume of her razor-wire lyrics and screech soprano vocals.
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Gawker
Amos sings all of these songs in almost the exact same phrasings she did however many years ago, and as she has been in concert for however many years since. . . . for the most part, these songs are just breathing like they have been for years via Amos' tireless touring and nightly tinkering of the work that gave her professional life.
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Liverpool Sound and Vision
Tori Amos doesn’t sit still, not at her beloved piano and more importantly not in her life. Just a little over a year since she released her first foray into classical music, she has come out all guns blazing with the breathtaking Gold Dust. All you need to know is it is brilliant, an album of excellence.
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NZ Herald
. . . however much Amos gilds the liner notes by saying the circumstances brought new images to mind and the notion of "a Memory Box", this is undeniably little more than an extravagant vanity project from someone who has never undervalued her work or its importance to her audience.
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laut.de
Although vocal arrangements and structures largely adhere to the originals, the new interpretations are transported into completely new emotional worlds through the American vocal cords strength gained over the years.
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Wilson & Alroy's Record Reviews
Overall, the performances brim with vigor ("Cloud On My Tongue," which I can never hear too much of), so like a live show, the album is a nice complement to the original versions but nothing more. (DBW)
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The Press
Those who loved Amos’s earlier work will be delighted with this, as it is an extremely welcome return to top form.
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Trll.ru
Actually, “Gold Dust” is a splash of accumulated energy and thoughts, a rethinking from the height (whatever one may say) of well-being, which can delay some listeners and charm others. But listening is a must, because not every day 15 songs of pure non-urgent beauty are in the wild.
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With Guitars
Gold Dust is a personal journey through the Amos songbook that reaffirms the timelessness of her music.
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Rolling Stone.de
. . . it is hardly surprising that Amos is now enjoying reinterpreting 14 selected pieces of her oeuvre with orchestral accompaniment, encouraged by her first appearance with the Metropole Orchestra in Amsterdam two years ago . Amos finds nothing to take a closer look at comparatively fresh material.
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ROCK TIMES
Instead of putting tried-and-tested oldies in an ironed-on robe, golden dust glitters between their Bösendorfer keys, what is supposedly forgotten is undoubtedly ambitious and released with a good dose of verve. No testimony of Midlife Crisis, but rather an adult and conciliatory arrival at home is the clear message and repeated revelation of an auratic artist . . . .
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Young Post
If you're yet to discover the voice that inspired a generation of female artists, this is a perfect place to get started.
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