sábado, 13 de outubro de 2012

"Gold Dust", and the Memories

This is an english translation wonderfully made by my brother Netto Sousa and a bit re-edited by myself, for the text I've written as a tribute to Tori's new album. If you want to read the original one, in portuguese, please click HERE.

This version was produced as a gift to anyone who access ToriBr but can't understand portuguese. Sorry for any possible mistake, and we hope you all like it ;)



Memories... Watching them getting shape and becoming farther and farther through the years, that’s such a thing none of us can escape from. And as time goes by, those same memories – which at the surface are moments firmed in the past, they really could change. At least, the way we feel them. Whether at a first sight they caused upheaval and regret, they can turn into turning points for our awareness and sense of reality (yet in some cases it comes to be such a rough one). Either they brought us pain in face of a huge loss, with some seasonal help they can end up in bringing us a sweeter and more generous feeling. Even if some memories were essentially joyful, they can produce such a melancholy when we reflect on how those good things could not come back anymore... To sum up, memories come and go; they don’t stand still in our minds and hearts.

That was the effort made by Tori Amos in her new album, Gold Dust. Representing – along with the stately fostering of an orchestra – that the souvenirs emerged by such songs are not exactly the same, yet they came up from the same root. The song girls have grown up, acquired more purport and experience throughout the worlds they’ve been, bringing us to the instant when all of them, even the more hurting ones, end up in being especial... They represent the track of a life during 20 years, by summoning all possible feelings that the mere fact of being human uses to do. And that is not only up to Tori herself, even though the songs have been brought to this reality on her own. It is also up to every toriphile who started to follow this red-haired pianist, building up their own memories with these same songs too… The concept underneath Gold Dust is of revisiting – for her, for you and for me.

Although many of us have missed several classical songs that would probably receive an astouding orchestral treatment, It would not be possible to make everyone happy with the length of a single disk. And even though the collection seemed to be a bit lazy, for Tori decided to use songs that could fit to orchestrations instead of innovating completely by picking the likes of “Cruel” or “Juárez”, it makes up concisely her big back catalogue and includes rather intense moments of novelty too, like “Flavor” (the first single) and the always pungent “Precious Things”. The lack of great news on most of the tracks does not mean they have not changed either; these changes were more subtle though, as they were concerned in adding, instead of redoing. As an interviewer said on the new wave of recent interviews, Tori seems to sing the songs with more strength, more intensity. And this is the result of a process that needs to happen to all of us: reaching maturity.

A notable feature in these transformations was the incorporation of the typical nuances excerpted from live performances of these songs: “Yes, Anastasia” was affected by an impressing cut on its length, but it represents what tori usually does when she plays that song live indeed; “Cloud On My Tongue”, in addition to such a moving new instrumentation for the "circles and circles, again, again" bridge, finally ends up with the sweet "he and she, and we..."; “Precious Things” acquired a version in which the "Guuurl" part is growled in a very fierce way; and “Silent All These Years”, one her dearest songs, acquired new voice layers in the bridge which portrays both verses sung in the original one, off the album “Little Earthquakes”, and from the simplest version of it, typical from her performances.

This just points out how these differences brought in this new album really sought to incorporate the evolution of these girls, from a more "juvenile" (but no less brilliant) form to an “adult” state, whereas they maintain their essence and definitely their force. Because this is growing up: to go through a thousand experiences, meeting new people, being surprised and torn apart, and after all of these things, to look at yourself, feeling differently, but still in your own skin. And yet, these are the same songs that made us cry in reminding us of people who are not coming back. The same songs that made us smile when they gave us comfort and joy. The same ones that saw us grow up and shrink down, being there even when we felt that the rest of the world wouldn’t be. They are in our hearts and even if for any reason we stop to listen to them, Tori and her girls will never leave us.

Memories... Time makes our perspective on them change, but there’s one thing neither time nor ourselves can change: the startling fact that they will always have their room. And Gold Dust is just a trace of it: memories will always have their own place.

“Whose God spread fear? Whose God spread love?”
“We’ll see how brave you are”
“I got lost on my wedding day”
“Circles and circles again, again... Got to stop spinning”
“With their nine inch nails and little fascist pants tucked inside the heart of every nice girl”
“Some say we have been in exile, what we need is solar fire”
“I tell you that I’ll always want you near... You say that things change, my dear”
“So afraid you’ll be what they never were”
“When you think, and boy, when you drink! When you think of me”
“And when I promised my hand, he promised me back snow cherries from France”
“And they said ‘Marianne killed herself’, and I said ‘Not a chance’”
“Years go by and I’m here still waiting for somebody else to understand”
“7 a.m., so it begins again... One zip favoring familiar silhouettes”

“And somewhere Alfie smiles, and says ‘enjoy her every cry you can see in the dark through the eyes of Laura Mars...’ ‘How did it go so fast?’ You say as we are looking back, and then we’ll understand we held Gold Dust, in our hands”



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