AMOS, TORI

She may be the daughter of a reverend, but Tori Amos never seemed the likeliest candidate for a Christmas album; she might sing about "God", but her music always seemed secular and never seasonal, but in a year that brought holiday albums by Bob Dylan and Sting, it makes perfect sense that Tori should deliver one, too. Amos' entry, Midwinter Graces, may be as unlikely as Dylan's, but it's closer in tenor to Sting's: it captures the wintriness of the season. Tori reworks many familiar carols, tweaking lyrics and pushing them together into a medley, so they sound quite similar to the newly written tunes that comprise the rest of the record. Thanks to some familiar melodies, it can sometimes seem seasonally appropriate, but it always seems purely Tori. Stephen Thomas Erlewine.

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