To Venus and Back
| Tori Amos
To Venus and Back
To Venus and Back, the fifth album released by singer and songwriter Tori Amos, is a two-disc album set including a studio album and a live album. The first disc, titled Venus: Orbiting, features eleven original songs that find Amos experimenting heavily in electronica. It spawned the singles "Bliss", "1000 Oceans", "Glory of the 80's" (Australia, the United Kingdom, and Europe only), and "Concertina" (US only). The second disc, Venus Live, Still Orbiting, is a thirteen-track album compiling live tracks recorded from her Plugged '98 tour. This is the first official live release of Amos's career.-Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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The Tech
With the combination of live and new studio works, this is an album that is sure to please a large audience and represents Tori at her best.
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Pon De Way Way Way
. . . for all their differences these tracks, ultimately, soar for all the same reasons Amos’ best work has soared; her compositions.
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Rolling Stone
With To Venus and Back, Amos pays herself the ultimate compliment: She’s good and complicated.
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The Harvard Crimson
The album, particularly the live CD, showcases the passion that Amos so candidly displays in her performances, and although the words may confound you, you can feel her in the music more than ever.
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Albumism
September 17, 2019. At 24 tracks strong in total—with a mix of new and old to satisfy Amos fans of all stripes—To Venus And Back ranks among Amos’ most immersive and rewarding listens to date.
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AllMusic
She's still expanding her music, but she's letting it breathe naturally, resulting in her best, most cohesive record since Under the Pink.
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The Music Box
. . . To Venus and Back comes packed to the rafters with 11 new studio tracks and 13 live tunes from Amos' '98 Plugged Tour). . . . yes, she can certainly be one spooky chanteuse. . . . the woman has an almost uncanny knack for insinuating herself just inches under the status quo's collectively prickly skin.
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Mark's Record Reviews
When I considered the prospect of sitting through a 2-hour Tori Amos double-CD, my initial thoughts involved the little-known terms "torture" and "suicide." But strangely, the first disc is pretty good!
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NME
. . . for her fifth album, she’s discovered the joys of electricity. As changes go, it hardly ranks alongside Bob Dylan aggravating die-hard folkies by embracing electricity. But by getting herself plugged in, Tori‘s managed to get more than a few wires crossed along the way.
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AV Club
The studio set is consistently as pleasantly accessible as the best stuff on 1998's fine From The Choirgirl Hotel, . . . .
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Questia
'To Venus and Back' a New, Improved Tori
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The Dent - PopMatters
To Venus and Back, Tori Amos' latest effort, is a highly flawed, if not ambitious double CD, . . . . All in all, it's an effort best left to those who are dedicated.
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The Dent - VH1 Reviews
To Venus and Back experiments with the sonic textures that have all the club kids blowing their whistles. The electronics are used effectively, but Amos' manipulation of machines doesn't inject her tunes with the same tense effect that her piano has provided in the past.
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The Dent - Billboard Album Review
With "to venus and back," Amos continues to expose herself--lyrically and musically--and in so doing has created quite the bold collection.
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The Dent - The Digital/Daily Cardinal
With songs her fans will love but the adventurous newcomer can enjoy, to venus and back is guaranteed to earn Amos another platinum.
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The Dent - theSpark.com Album Review
Musically, Ms. Amos's latest work is hardly innovative or even substantial. Despite a cultural tendency to view piano music as inherently better than, say, guitar music, To Venus and Back is pop music at its simplest and most banal.
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The Dent - Drum Magazine
Throughout Venus, you hear a band playing at its peak -- working quickly on new songs in the studio and improvising on older material on stage. It's an impressive document, even if you aren't particularly a Torihead.
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The Dent - Pop-music.net
With "To Venus And Back", she has finally produced an album full of complexity and richness throughout.
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The Dent - The Times (of London) - Album Review
THIS TWO-CD set was originally intended to be highlights of her 1998 tour but Amos found she had enough fresh songs to record a new album. After 1998's harrowing From the Choirgirl Hotel, To Venus and Back is relatively playful . . . .
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The Dent - The Daily Mail
With more than two hours of music, this is unlikely to win her many new fans, but her swooping voice has never sounded better than on the studio songs here.
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The Dent - The Sunday Times (of London) - Album Review
To Venus and Back brings all of Amos's quirks to the fore, and is as marvellous and quixotic as last year's From the Choirgirl Hotel. Bliss, Concertina and Glory of the 80's are tours de force, while an accompanying live album cherrypicks a strong back catalogue.
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The Dent - The Telegraph - U.K. Album Review
So is it any good? Yes: it's just as stunning as its predecessor - manic, percussive, passionate, weird, thrilling. With a whole arsenal of uninhibited whoops, shrieks and ululations at her disposal, Amos makes most other contemporary vocalists sound like Smurfs.
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The Dent - Attitude Magazine (U.K.)
Tori's last album, from the choirgirl hotel, boldly took the Amos sound away for complex piano-led odes to a new, fuller band sound, and to venus and back charts a similar course. Though not as focussed and wilfully diverse, venus still contains some stellar Amos moments . . . .
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The Dent - San Francisco Chronicle
Amos is a songwriter of incredible potential who hasn't yet recorded her masterwork. Still, "To Venus and Back" provides a testament to her power as a live performer, as well as her versatility as a composer.
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The Dent - English Sky Magazine
Best listened to when you're feeling really miserable, it'll cheer you up just to know someone else feels worse than you do.
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The Dent - Q Magazine
To Venus & Back is her most involving album to date. It's a rigorous listen, uneasy on the ears, and malevolently murky enough to suggest that Nine Inch Nails were loitering somewhere within the bowels of the studio making suggestions on how to make it sound darker still.
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The Dent - Baltimore Sun
Taken individually, each disc is certainly strong enough to stand on its own, . . . . Amos' "to venus and back" may seem an odd sort of package tour, but it's definitely a trip worth taking.
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The Dent - Spin Magazine Album Review
Just as Venus is both a planet and a goddess, these albums show the two sides, present and past of Tori Amos. Venus Orbiting would be the spacey satellite, too reliant on technology to be accessible, while Venus Live is who the fairies have come to expect and adore: the goddess incarnate, more organic, down to earth, ever changing but not forgetting her origins.
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The Dent - Wall Of Sound Album Review
. . . to venus and back is a sprawling, two-disc album originally intended as a B-sides compilation, but turned into a full-blown collection of new songs once the muse . . . dropped in for a spot of tea. She's as lyrically bizarre as ever . . . .
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The Dent - Interview Magazine
With experimental production details, textured rhythms, and a seemingly infinite melodic range, Amos trips expansively from the mournful to the celebratory on this wonderful, moody, and mildly psychedelic outing.
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EW
Forsaking her up-front chops and brash lyricism, this disc is more Tori in an Ambient Mood, with electronic effects on a half-dozen cuts that sound like they could’ve been produced by old pal Trent Reznor.
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Rhino
TO VENUS AND BACK introduces Tori Amos’ music in a new context, one well worth exploring; she had come a long way from the quiet piano performances that introduced her to the world.
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Babyblaue-Seiten.de
Conclusion: I have a hard time with "One Side Live and One Side Studio" and also here I would have found a double live and a studio disc separately better. Nevertheless, the disc is not only recommended for fans.
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People
Bottom Line: Powerful singer rockets to new heights.
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All-Reviews.com
All in all, there's something here for everybody, and Amos proves something yet again that we've known all along: Amos is a master of her craft.
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Wilson & Alroy's Record Reviews
The mystery deepens: one live disc that's as thrilling and passionate as ever, and one studio disc that's even more listless than Choirgirl. . . . Priced just a few dollars more than a single CD, this is a decent buy even if you throw away the studio disc - which you may end up doing. (DBW)
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MetroWeekly
. . . “To Venus and Back” is finally the album it was meant to be. As for disc two, the live tracks are handpicked gems that are all excellent . . . . But it’s the studio disc that makes “Venus” a must-own. It’s a sonic universe to lose yourself in – trippy headphone music with layers of sounds that are absolutely enthralling 14 years after its release.
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The Oberlin Review \\ Arts Article
If you're a Tori Amos fan, you'll pick this up regardless, because that's the kind of creature we are. And maybe we'll get disillusioned gradually, or maybe we won't. But for now, to venus and back is still worth getting.
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Adrian's Album Reviews
Overall, 'To Venus And Back' isn't her finest, although it's still better than a lot of other artists that she is compared to.
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