Tori Amos will release her Universal Republic debut album, Abnormally Attracted To Sin, on May 19, 2009. AOL Music’s Spinner.com will premiere today, Tuesday, March 10 the album’s cover art and tracklisting, as well as an interview where Tori discusses the record.

Tori will offer a sneak-peek at some of the songs from Abnormally Attracted To Sin at this year’s South By Southwest Music Conference in Austin, TX when she will headline the Universal Republic Records Showcase. The showcase, one of the most anticipated events in the conference’s two decade-plus history, is on Thursday, March 19, and will be held at the historic club La Zona Rosa.

A DVD of corresponding ‘visualettes’ for each track will accompany the deluxe version of Abnormally Attracted To Sin. These interlocking episodic films bring to life the narrative arc of the album. The footage was captured over the past year and shot with a noir twist in HD and Super 8.

The album was produced by Tori and features longtime contributors Matt Chamberlain on drums, Jon Evans on bass, and Mac Aladdin on guitars. Once again Tori is joined in the studio by Mark Hawley and Marcel Van Limbeek who recorded and mixed the album at Martian Engineering in Cornwall, England. Abnormally Attracted To Sin is the singer’s tenth studio album, and is sure to be regarded by fans and critics as another innovative chapter in the artist’s trailblazing career.

For nearly two decades, Tori Amos’ stark lyrical flourishes and inspired musicianship have shaped the musical landscape.  She is also considered one of the most emotionally powerful live artists in music today.  Her most recent world tour, launched in the summer of 2007, with media platforms such as the BBC who lauded both her live show and album as ‘returning Tori Amos back to the forefront of a genre she defined…still pushing her own boundaries.’

Source: everythingtori.com

Tori Amos is in a good mood when she phones Spinner from her Cornwall, England studio. She owes her glee, in part, to a white chocolate chip cookie, which she informs us her 8-year-old daughter, Natashya, baked for her. “Husband didn’t marry me for my baking,” she laughs.

It’s just weeks away from Amos’ scheduled performance at SXSW, where she’ll unveil new tunes from her tenth studio album, ‘Abnormally Attracted to Sin,’ due May 19. In addition to debuting the album cover and tracklist with Spinner, Amos discussed her new work, how to divvy up the Democrats and Republicans, and what she considers to be the greatest sin of all.

What was the impetus behind this new collection?
I’m drawn to questioning what traditional authorities have defined sin to be. As a minister’s daughter, I’ve been exposed to the traditional belief system. [Sin] has been used to shame and control people. If you’re controlled by a religious structure, then you’re going to have a very different outlook on life and what you’re open to than if you’re not controlled by these old, crumbling concepts.

The new album, ‘Abnormally Attracted to Sin,’ takes its name from a line in ‘Guys and Dolls,’ said by the character Sarah Brown. Do you feel a kinship with her in any way?
No, because I’m not torn by my religious beliefs. A lot of the problems we have right now in our world are because of intolerance dictated by the big religions.

Do you feel it’s your duty or obligation to expose these truths in your work?
I find that right now, in this turbulent time where there’s so much strife all around the world, there is an opportunity for religions to open their doors and their hearts — to become compassionate for someone else’s beliefs instead of intolerant. That’s always really disappointed me about people who talk about being religious, and yet they’re the most judgemental, usually. Right now, we’re at war, and I wrote quite a lot of this album while I was on tour last time. I traveled the world, I played in Israel, I traveled through countries where the major religions exist — and the one thing that I started to do more than ever was to really ask questions about “What do I believe in?” Traveling and seeing how women see themselves in different cultures … how the community thinks of them becomes so important for some of them, more than how than how they even feel about themselves. And some of them are dying — they’re dying in their lives. You might be approved of in your community, but your heart is completely breaking. And I don’t find that a tolerant society — that is not the compassionate Christ path to me. I began to see that kindness and tolerance were not found in institutions, but found in individuals who seemed to be breaking away from the old patriarchal viewpoint.

Did you have a similar experience growing up in a Christian household?
I was brought up in a home that was … we were brought up in the Christian doctrine, and that’s just what it was. We believed in it, and I think the question is: What is that doctrine? Because it’s not about the open heart. Maybe it takes times like we have right now, times of so much upheaval, where you allow yourself to really find out what it is that you feel about something. My daughter has all kinds of questions all the time, and if she were brought up in a less tolerant household, she would be broken, no question about it. But she has a grandfather who was a Methodist minister and she has a part of her family who are very much practicing Christians, yet she loves them. But she is not interested if they agree with what she thinks because she is allowed to believe in what she wants.

One of the current arguments at large in America is whether or not gays should have the right to marry. Religion is often used in the argument against gay marriage. Why do you think that union is so threatening?
We go back to that word — intolerance. That, to me, isn’t what America ever was. It wasn’t about telling another person how to live their life. I always said in a perfect world, you keep the Democrats out of your bank account and the Republicans out of your bedroom. But in life, why do you have to have anybody else in your bedroom if you’re a consenting adult? That is the need people have right now, it seems, to dictate to another person how they should live there life. I find that the greatest sin of all. The record explores all kinds of feelings and depending on your state of mind, your set of circumstances could result in a very different outcome.

What can you tell me about the visuals that will be accompanying each of the songs on this album?
I’m calling them “vignettes” because it’s more akin to a mini-film. This all started on tour last time, when we were filming the live shows. The director was putting together montages, and as I saw the montages, new music was already coming. I started to put the new music to the mini-films that were being made out on the road.

When I travel I get all kinds of ideas. I’m forced to see things that I wouldn’t and question. When you asked me about ‘Guys and Dolls,’ I guess I was never a Bible-thumping Christian; I was always trying to question because I had so much religion in my upbringing. I was drawn to those people and those ideas that weren’t accepted necessarily, and it’s not because these ideas in reality are “evil” — that’s just the perception that’s being given. The reality I was brought up in was, “Anything that doesn’t work within the Christian doctrine is sinful.” And that’s a lot of stuff.

‘Abnormally Attracted To Sin’ Tracklist

01. Give
02. Welcome To England
03. Strong Black Vine
04. Flavor
05. Not Dying Today
06. Maybe California
07. Curtain Call
08. Fire To Your Plain
09. Police Me
10. That Guy
11. Abnormally Attracted To Sin
12. 500 Miles
13. Mary Jane
14. Starling
15. Fast Horse
16. Ophelia
17. Lady In Blue

(New York, NY) There will be thousands of artists and tens of thousands of music fans gathering at over 60 venues for this year’s South By Southwest Music Conference in Austin, TX, but all eyes will be on groundbreaking star Tori Amos, headlining one of the most anticipated events in the conference’s two decade-plus history, on Thursday, March 19, at historic Austin club, La Zona Rosa.

The Grammy nominated singer/songwriter is headlining a star-studded Universal Republic showcase at the popular venue, sure to be looked on as one of the must-see events of the 4 day festival. Tori will be performing new songs from her upcoming Universal Republic debut album, Abnormally Attracted To Sin, scheduled to hit stores and the digital domain this Spring, as well as other classics from her influential repertoire.

Tori’s recent signing with Universal Republic is in keeping with the inventive star’s unconventional approach to the artist/record company relationship. Universal Republic will distribute Tori’s new album, as well as correlate other ventures in tandem with Tori’s prolific creative output. Abnormally Attracted To Sin, her tenth studio album, is another innovative chapter in the artist’s trailblazing story. Every track on the album will be accompanied by a corresponding ‘visualette’, featuring footage that has been captured over the past year. Shot in HD and Super 8, the visualettes will incorporate a documentary style.

Tori’s most recent album, American Doll Posse, which has been hailed by Rolling Stone magazine as ‘her best album in years,’ was released in 2007 to a chorus of rave reviews. The captivating album, like many of her previous efforts, adhered to a strong conceptual theme, with Tori inhabiting multiple archetypal female personae, a testament to her willingness to continue to push the boundaries of the female singer/songwriter.

Regarded as one of the most emotionally fearless live artists in music today, her most recent world tour, launched in the summer of 2007, saw her soar with her first full-fledged rock band in nearly a decade. Media platforms such as the BBC lauded both her live show and album as ‘returning Tori Amos back to the forefront of a genre she defined… still pushing her own boundaries.’

— Visit The Afterglow Community for discussion of the new album and to discuss Tori’s appearance at SXSW!

There’s information about the Live At Montreux 1991/1992 release, the song-writing process, The Light Princess musical and some information about the new album that she’s working on.

You can download the entire Keyboard Magazine interview with Tori Amos here in .pdf-format. 

It was to avoid conflicts like that that led Amos to leave Sony and fund from her own pocket the project she is currently working on. “It’s very much about the marriage of film and music. Think silent films, but centred around a song. It’s not a video. I’m calling them Visualettes. The story comes to you from the film and the song together.

“I had to become my own investor because, in this day and age, if you turn around and say, ‘I want to produce 17 short films and 17 songs…’ they’re looking at you and saying, ‘Not on our dime you’re not.’ That’s true of an indie as well as a giant, because an indie doesn’t have enough money. Everyone wants a guaranteed return, and with the economic situation the way it is, that means the ability to be brave is being aborted by the fear of our times.

“By leaving the Sony system I knew that if I could be the investor in the artist Tori Amos, then the work could be taken to its final moment on the creative side, before it gets meddled with. If you’re not holding those financial cards, if you have to partner with someone, then you have to open the door, and I don’t think records can be made as a democracy.”

— Visit The Afterglow Community for discussion of this topic!

Her upcoming Universal Republic debut (her tenth studio album), is currently scheduled for a late spring/early summer 2009 unveiling.  Every track on the album will be accompanied by a corresponding ‘visualette,’ featuring footage that has been captured over the past year.  Shot in HD and Super 8, the visualettes will incorporate a documentary style. “Tori is very much looking forward to a fulfilling creative relationship with Monte Lipman and the great team he has assembled at Universal Republic,” stated John Witherspoon, Amos’ manager, “The intricate development of this unique Audio Visual component to Tori’s musical presentation, which she has been crafting through her own Galactic Media company, is indicative of the outlier creative and strategic opportunities both Tori and Universal Republic hope to build upon in this extraordinary relationship.”

Innovative; influential; poetic; bombastic – indefinable multiple Grammy nominee, Tori Amos, has teamed up with Universal Republic Records, it was announced today by Monte Lipman, Co-President and COO of Universal Republic Records.  “We’re honored to welcome Tori Amos into the Universal Republic family,” stated Mr. Lipman.  “It was Doug Morris (Chairman & CEO, Universal Music) who originally signed Ms. Amos to her first recording deal, and we’re excited that they will be able to continue their association via Universal Republic. Tori has always exemplified the truest spirit of the independent artist, blazing a path for nearly two decades with a legacy of incomparable conceptual breakthroughs; as singer/songwriter; as social commentator; and as one of our most thought provoking visual performers.  We’re thrilled to be in a position to help facilitate the next chapter of her amazing career.”

In a unique venture in keeping with Ms. Amos’ and Universal Republic’s unconventional approach to the artist/record company relationship, the two powerhouses have joined forces to jointly navigate Ms. Amos next release, as well as correlate other ventures in tandem with Ms. Amos’ prolific creative output.  Her upcoming Universal Republic debut (her tenth studio album), is currently scheduled for a late spring/early summer 2009 unveiling.  Every track on the album will be accompanied by a corresponding ‘visualette,’ featuring footage that has been captured over the past year.  Shot in HD and Super 8, the visualettes will incorporate a documentary style.  “Tori is very much looking forward to a fulfilling creative relationship with Monte Lipman and the great team he has assembled at Universal Republic,” stated John Witherspoon, Amos’ manager, “The intricate development of this unique Audio Visual component to Tori’s musical presentation, which she has been crafting through her own Galactic Media company, is indicative of the outlier creative and strategic opportunities both Tori and Universal Republic hope to build upon in this extraordinary relationship.”

Ms. Amos’ most recent album, American Doll Posse, which has been hailed by Rolling Stone magazine as ‘her best album in years,’ was released in 2007 to a chorus of rave reviews. The captivating album, like many of her previous efforts, was tethered to a strong conceptual theme, with Ms. Amos inhabiting multiple archetypal female personae, a testament to her willingness to continue to challenge the thematic landscape and emotional currency of the female singer/songwriter.

With more than 12 million albums sold, and commanding a significant and uniquely loyal audience from the rock, pop, alternative, and under-the-radar regions of the music world, Ms. Amos has influenced a new generation of artists in a myriad of platforms.  Most recently, she was the catalyst for a one-of-a-kind anthology chronicling her career, the 500 page Graphic Novel, Comic Book Tattoo, featuring stunning visual interpretations of her songs by more than 80 artists, (including an introduction by friend and creative influence artist Neil Gaiman, creator of the Sandman series).

Regarded as one of the most compelling and emotionally fearless live artists in music today, her American Doll Posse World Tour, launched in the summer of 2007, saw her soar with her first full-fledged rock band in nearly a decade.  Media platforms such as the BBC lauded both her live show and album as ‘returning Tori Amos back to the forefront of a genre she defined… still pushing her own boundaries.’

Her genre-shattering breakthrough in the early 1990s, including 1991’s ‘Me And A Gun’ EP, and 1992’s masterwork, Little Earthquakes, single-handedly revived the piano-and-singer motif in rock music.  Little Earthquakes went on to sell more than 3 million albums worldwide, with subsequent Grammy nominated albums such as Under The Pink (1994), 1996’s Boys For Pele, 2001’s Strange Little Girls, and 2002’s Scarlet’s Walk continuing to explore broader themes.

Known for her extraordinary repertoire, groundbreaking videos and astounding visual transformations, an assortment of compilations have been intermittently released the past few years, including, A Piano: The Collection, a Rhino Records 5 Box set of classics, rarities, and never-before-released gems adroitly re-capping her career, a DVD compilation of signature Amos videos, Fade To Red in 2006, and 2008’s Live At Montreaux, a DVD release featuring the singer/songwriter’s earliest performances at the festival in 1991/1992.  In conjunction with her American Doll Posse Tour, Ms. Amos oversaw the release of the web-compatible Legs And Boots series, a complete collection of shows available for downloading, culled from her North American live trek.

Nominated for multiple awards, including ten Grammy’s, Ms. Amos has been working on a musical for London’s British National Theatre called The Light Princess tentatively scheduled to debut in 2010.

The maverick singer is spreading her wings. She’s writing a feminist fairytale for the National Theatre, she tells James McNair for The Independant.

“There’s nothing wrong with Disney,” says Tori Amos, “but my benchmarks are more West Side Story meets Jesus Christ Superstar. I’m trying to write a musical that will be relevant to a 16-year-old today, a rite of passage for a young girl into womanhood.

“The National Theatre [with whom she's in talks] has been more open-minded than anyone I could have worked with on Broadway, but everything has to be approved by committee, and I have to tell you that not everyone is aboard my Bösendorfer rocket-ship. They can pull out and this musical may never be staged, but I don’t want to be writing for a fuddy-duddy audience.”

Having split with Epic, Amos is financing recording sessions for her as-yet-untitled 10th studio album herself (again there’s a concept; each song will be tied to its own short film), but with 12 million album sales and a vast, famously loyal fan base behind her, the singer surely needn’t worry about this winter’s fuel bills?

We’ve ostensibly met to discuss Amos’s upcoming DVD release Live at Montreux 1991/1992, but for now we’re talking about the stage adaptation by her and the playwright Samuel Adamson of George MacDonald’s 19th-century fairy tale The Light Princess.

It figures that Amos, 45, once dubbed “Queen of the Fairies”, should be attracted by a story about a princess whose lack of gravity causes her to float above the world. But as the North Carolina-born singer and pianist points out, MacDonald’s fantastical allegory has substance and a malleable, enduring resonance, the princess’s “lightness” being a vehicle for Amos to explore modern-day illnesses such as anorexia, and other elements of MacDonald’s work lending themselves to environmental themes.

This being Amos, we can expect the work (which she hopes to complete by 2010) to be packed with feminist ideas. “The thing about the original story I wasn’t crazy about is that the princess’s disability gets blamed on an old hag,” she says. “We’re not going to deal in spells cast by old ladies; we’re dealing with problems caused by power and greed, many of which start with men.”

Amos says some of the music in the piece is Wagnerian in approach, while one song, “Delectable Guy Pain”, was partly inspired by the Shirley Bassey hit “Big Spender”. There’s an aria for the princess that Amos likens to a darker take on “Memory” from Cats. “Whatever you think of Andrew Lloyd Webber, he knows what he’s doing with a melodic arc,” she adds.

Like this year’s Comic Book Tattoo – a 480-page interpretation of Amos’s songs by various graphic novelists – The Light Princess demonstrates the singer’s desire to diversify. With albums as conceptually daring as 1991′s apiary/gnostic gospels-informed The Beekeeper behind her one can see why Amos would need a fresh challenge, but her move to cover more bases also seems driven by her recent split from Epic Records and the uncertainties that has brought in its wake.

Amos’s contract with Epic was drawn up in 1999. Back then, the music industry was in robust health, but by the time she had delivered her fourth album to Epic, a general decline in sales throughout the industry had made the terms of her deal almost impossible to meet.

In April this year, the singer managed to extricate herself. “I have my sovereignty now,” she says, “so I’m having all these dates with record companies and distributors. Some are new faces and some are people I might have been married to many years ago. Do I go with my ex-husband’s brother or do I go back with my first husband? It’s tricky, but it’s sexy to be holding all the cards.”

Lest Amos’s metaphor-speak confuses, she is married to the British sound engineer Mark Hawley. The couple met on Amos’s Under the Pink tour in 1994 and currently live between homes in Cornwall and Florida, with their daughter Natashya. Having split with Epic, Amos is financing recording sessions for her as-yet-untitled 10th studio album herself (again there’s a concept; each song will be tied to its own short film), but with 12 million album sales and a vast, famously loyal fan base behind her, the singer surely needn’t worry about this winter’s fuel bills?

“I don’t have endless amounts of cash to plough into things,” she says, “but we’ve been fairly careful. We didn’t buy any Ferraris – my husband has to watch Top Gear for his metal pornography. There’s actually a part of me that worries I might be spending Tash’s university money, but she’s fine with that. She’s like, ‘It’s OK, Mummy, go rock; I might not want to go to college anyway.’”

Unlike most eight-year-olds, Natashya Lórien Hawley has already been around the world four times. She has an iPhone. “She’s learning piano and a bit of guitar,” says her mother, “but she wants to be a film director and her main thing now is taking pictures. When I look at what she’s doing on Photoshop it’s clear to me that her eye sees something different because of the rich experiences she’s had.”

The Live at Montreux 1991/1992 DVD is noteworthy because its pair of year-apart performances bookend the success of Amos’s debut Little Earthquakes, which reached No 14 in the UK album charts on its release in January 1992. Prior to that Amos often topped the bill at entry-level UK venues such as the Mean Fiddler in Harlesden, north London. “I’d take the Tube and walk the rest,” she says. “I didn’t know where the hell I was.”

It was, Amos admits, “a bit of a headrush” when the impact of Little Earthquakes led to her face all over MTV and thousands of billboards. “But there was a rosier side to non-success,” she says. “There’s romance involved when people are discovering you. But then they begin to see your faults. Now, 16 years on, things feel different again, of course. People want to trade in their Ford for a new model ? you can’t be a ’68 Jag for ever.”

Still, Amos shows no signs of slowing down. She says that her brother Michael’s death in a car crash in 2004, aged 50, “burst the bubble of immortality” for her. “Life is fleeting,” she adds, “and in the light of that you have to seize the day.”

A stint filming some of the silent movies that will accompany Amos’s new album is scheduled for two days after our interview. She has also contributed to Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna’s new book Cherry Bomb, partly “a guide to becoming a better flirt”, and has recorded a duet with David Byrne for his forthcoming record Here Lies Love.

If all goes well with The Light Princess, Amos plans a comic-book version. She says it’s the promotional side of things rather than the creative that can be wearing: “Sometimes you can have great conversations, but unfortunately there are also journalists who want to get you divorced.”

We breeze through different topics. Amos tells me she doesn’t ride on her husband’s motorcycle for fear of damaging her fingers, but that she does take the jet-ski for a spin when in Florida. She says Tash demonstrated her Democratic leanings by scrawling “Vote Obama!” on FedEx boxes dispatched from the Amos household, and that her father Edison, a former Baptist minister, has started learning the piano aged 80 and is progressing well despite his arthritic digits.

“My parents are actually running across America like teenagers right now,” Amos adds. “My dad’s got this John Deere tractor from the farm he grew up on, and my mom sits up back ? it’s like a scene from Oklahoma!. When they visit me on tour we want to get them a nice room, but they’re from the Depression era and they always insist on some budget motel.

“They’re still madly in love, too. They’ve both come close to death and now they know that they are staring the physical end right in the eye. They’ve told me they feel like two old oak trees whose job is to be strong so that the rest of the family can come sit under them and find shelter and stability. I think that’s pretty great.”