Native Invader
| Tori Amos
Native Invader
Native Invader is the fifteenth studio album (12th of entirely original material) by American singer/songwriter Tori Amos. It was released on September 8, 2017, through Decca Records. Its lead single, "Cloud Riders", was released on July 27, 2017.-Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Consequence of Sound
The strength of this album, and the 14 that precede it, is the immense healing and soothing found in the sheer beauty of Amos’ vocal delivery.
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Pitchfork
One of pop’s most inventive composers returns with a braid of political, maternal, and celestial statements. On Native Invader, Amos’ intricately arranged songs are passionate and despairingly poetic.
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AllMusic
A decade after the release of her most politically outspoken album, a reinvigorated Tori Amos once again takes aim at the state of the world on her 15th album, Native Invader. One of Amos' tightest and most digestible efforts, it's a standout in her late-era catalog, featuring instant classics like the epic "Reindeer King" and the surprising thrill "Up the Creek."
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Rolling Stone
It adds up to one of the most purposeful full-length statements in her quarter-century career.
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Slant Magazine
Native Invader fulfills the promise of its stunning opener. It’s also a reminder of the power Amos wields when she strips away the broad concepts and pop-rock trappings and allows her prodigious piano playing and heart-wrenching confessionals to do the politicking.
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Paste Magazine
Native Invader is not one of Tori’s sexier albums, nor is it as playful as she’s demonstrated herself capable of being. But it’s strong and unwavering in its commitment to being muse-driven and unafraid.
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Drowned In Sound
What I’m reviewing is a work of genius, and should as any work of genius, be treated critically and thoughtfully - which I have.
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The Line Of Best Fit
Like the best of Amos’ work over the past 20 years, what makes Native Invader exceptional is its complexity: songs are laid out like puzzles, ready for the subjectivity of the listener, with no obvious interpretations.
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The Guardian
A walk in the Smoky Mountains in the footsteps of her late Cherokee grandfather helped the musician rediscover her muse – and write an album that confronts the US’s rapacious violence.
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The Young Folks
With Native Invader, Tori Amos stays true to form. Fans will love it, detractors will loathe it. It’s predictable, yet good. Amos hits all of the Tori Amos beats but manages to give a final product that’s more than the sum of its parts.
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Music OMH
As ever with Amos’ more recent albums, it’s a bit overlong and some songs, especially in the album’s mid-section, float by without ever making much of an impression. Yet when Tori is on form, she still sounds as vital and exciting as she did 25 years ago. Native Invader might be just another Tori Amos album, but for those willing to explore it, there are more than a few treats to be discovered.
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Clash Music
Bewitching but lacking bite…
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Earbuddy
Wielding her vulnerability like a battle axe, Native Invader sounds like one of the most confident, strong releases from Amos in years.
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The National.ae
Tori Amos' Native Invader is smart and beautifully structured Fifteen albums in, songstress Tori Amos proves there’s nothing flaky about her, as new release Native Invader blends lush piano with searing lyrics and commentary
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Higher Plain Music
. . . do I recommend Native Invader? Absolutely – but you must bring all your brain to appreciate it. As an observer, Tori has it nailed. Once you then lay your own interpretations to each of the songs then you’ll grow to really enjoy and treasure the album – but that road can be a long one.
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Drunken Werewolf
While the album never really breaks any musical boundaries, it is nonetheless a roller-coaster of emotion blessed with a number of stand-out songs, and without doubt a beautiful piece of work.
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Renowned For Sound
Native Invaders is another superbly crafted collection from one of the most grounded and in-touch songwriters, story-tellers and vocalists of our time. If there is one album to own in 2017 – it’s this one right here!
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The Scotsman
Amos marshals the raw emotions of the past year into her usual elegant, expansive pop, which is delicious to listen to, as if challenging through stealth.
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AV Club
Lush and deeply felt, Native Invader is vintage Tori Amos
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Independent
. . . having spent so long exploring the intensely personal, she struggles here to find the right tone for more public matters.
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Albumism
Without question, Native Invader will keep conversations apace with Amos' fans. With respect to its own legacy within her discography, Native Invader is Amos' sharpest set, complementary to what came before, but with its spirit stirred by the moment.
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Slug Mag
Never a stranger to a political stance in her songwriting and ever attuned to her muses, Tori Amos’ 15th studio album is full of a raw energy and power that immediately draw the listener in.
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NPR
In Tori Amos' New Album, A Return To Nature and Family
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With Guitars
. . . Amos’s fifteenth studio album is an intense feast of melody, protest, tenderness and pain.
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The Badger Herald
Through Amos’s flawless and timeless vocals, and the relatable nature of her themes of grief and fear, Amos creates an album that is both hopeful and a call to action against wickedness.
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Norman Records
A fantastic record that brings so much with it in terms of quality sound and a great addition to the indie rock scene.
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qobuz
Today, Native Invader proves yet again that hers is a unique voice that takes little heed of musical fashions and prefers to focus on the art of the perfect song.
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Spill Magazine
Native Invader is one of Tori Amos’s best albums, and certainly her best in a very long time. She has abandoned the frills she was using in the past decade and has returned to form.
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Cyrptic Rock
Native Invader is exactly what one would expect from Tori Amos: a splendidly meandering, darkly memorable, marvelously composed epic of melancholy and melody, personal pains and piano. The ability to close your eyes and lose yourself in Amos’ tales of personal pains, natural wanderings, and political pestilence is, as ever, entirely present here.
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New Noise Magazine
Tori Amos is back and as brilliant, beautiful and emotionally wrenching as ever. In fact, her latest album, Native Invader, for me represent a return to the classic style of Golden Age Tori from Little Earthquakes on to Under the Pink.
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Popfection
Through and through, “Native Invader” contains many brilliant moments, and let’s us know that we should never give up. Tori’s determination and fearlessness here can be traced back to records such as “Scarlet’s Walk” and “American Doll Posse,” while musically there seems to be connections to “From the Choirgirl Hotel,” making for Tori’s most solid album in a decade.
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Out Riderr
Native Invader has what her previous efforts lacked, and that is clear conceptual inspired direction. These songs are great, they shine with brilliant arrangements and production that fits the material.
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The Skinny
Tori Amos's fifteenth album, Native Invader, draws on events from her own life as well as tensions across the globe.
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The Fountain
What’s missing is a variance of tempos throughout the album. It’s all around the same BPM so it gets tired quickly. SUMMARY One to have on when you do your ironing or something.
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Liverpool Sound and Vision
A good album, it is framed and admired but place it alongside for example Clarence Holbrook Carter’s The War Bride and it is no contest, one that the Mona Lisa would crumble under.
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News Whistle
From plaintive piano work, dusty folk, to dubby experimentations, Native Invader is a wholly satisfying, if a little unsettling, listen. Amos has never been an “easy” listen, and this new album is no exception.
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Exclaim!
Yes, Native Invader is an effectual statement by an artist who has built her career on making them, but at times it feels a little restrained in its tone compared to some of her most memorable work.
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UPROXX
Emotional, lyrical, and fiery, the album’s lush, melodic soundscapes reels from major issue to major issue, turning the personal into the global and the political. It’s a lot to absorb in in one listen, and this album deserves many.
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RadioUTD
Even though the album has unique assets that definitely make an interesting sound, holistically it is not. . . . Listening through the album feels like it takes energy. With the ballads and beats arranged in this manner, the tracks can get boring. One certainly has to be in a particular mood to be engaged in the album's entirety.
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Treble
With a little of the excess trimmed, Native Invader has the raw material to be in Tori’s top five. As it is, it doesn’t quite reach that high, though it’s a pretty solid album. But it accomplishes something more important than being a personal best: . . . .
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DERVSWERVE
The American’s legion of super-fans will wax lyrical about Native Invader, and so they should. Hopefully, others will opens their eyes, ears and hearts long enough to experience the wonder of Ms. Amos’ idiosyncratic virtuosity.
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Whats On
Tori Amos, already a committed activist for women’s rights has never shirked from breaking new ground with her music and has a knack for shooting from the hip lyrically. Native Invader sees this tradition continue with some lovely touches that hint at even better to come in what has already been a glittering career. Well worth a listen.
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HuffPost
Native Invader, like Night of Hunters and Scarlet’s Walk, is literature, not pop music. Its power lies in close reading and listening.
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Matthias
"Native Invader" is a private, a political album. An album that both reconciles and activates. An album that wants to be heard.
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deadgrandmablog
This is the best Tori Amos album since Scarlet’s Walk in my opinion, and that’s some tall praise right there. Check it out!
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All The Time I Was Listening
It is a beautiful album, but the feeling of confusion and anticipation of gaining further information down the line are the main things I took from this album. It is not a bad thing, but it can feel frustrating as well.
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Amoeba Music
Tori Amos is in fine form on Native Invader, a cohesive, darkly dreamy vision of our current political and environmental turmoil. Passionate, lush, and alive, this collection of songs is both urgent and reassuring.
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