Chris DeLine

Showing no lack of creativity, Tori Amos’s 10th solo studio album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, is a 70-plus-minute journey that explores the relationship between faith, sin, and romance. But the album goes even further than the title suggests, as Amos explained in an interview with Billboard at this past year’s SXSW; it is meant to reflect on the continual conflict that has pushed the world toward upheaval, and how she copes. “Songs are the way that I’m able to pull myself out of paralysis,” she said. “And then I don’t get stuck into the place of shock.” Anyone with a finger remotely close to the pulse of pop music should have an idea as to how this pianist might cope; her status as one of the most uncompromising female musicians of our generation was solidified almost instantly with her classic 1992 solo debut, Little Earthquakes (an album that the U.K.’s Q Magazine named the 66th best of all time in 1998). Granted, time has changed a few things, but it has done nothing to compromise Amos’s passionate lyrics and fiery delivery. With openers One Eskimo.

[This critics’ pick was originally published by City Pages.]