The Texture of the American Doll Posse.

CONCEPT

Continued from here...

What it means.

It is meant to be political, but not didactic.
Tori's argument is largely that the political process has been missing a loud, boisterous dialogue.
So: Instead of simply leveling one-dimension of invective against incumbant powers, she creates (nevertheless critical) characters to represent different points-of-view. Yo George may be an unambiguous indictment, but this plays differently at the beginning of the album then in its religious situation near the end: "Bushes burning on the mountain." Maybe not the most subtle choice for a double entendre, but it is the song about the youth fighting on both sides of the Iraq war.

The texture of the album results from the movement of points of intersection between these views. Common strands are the tendency to lush/ornate/elaborate arrangments, a polarity between heavy guitar/hard rock and emotive piano, lyrics just as dense as Tori's average, but maybe a little less inscrutable:

There's a gold star on a gendarme,
so she asked him, "Hey, can you hold my song?"
"It's the one piece that I got left,
so hide it well," she said.

Texture: There are mysteries: Is the song Fat Slut intended to be funny, and if so, how serious does that render Girl Disappearing? Of what might a Satin Revolution consist? Most enticingly, who is Smoky Joe, and how many Pips are there, and which Pip wants to kill him? And Why?

Texture: For all of the competing, jostling, voices, there is a whispered quality to all of this. It doesn't happen at a large party or lecture; not at a public event. It seems to all happen at night, in a room that would be silent if not for the people speaking inside.

Texture: There aren't any of the usual out-of-body experiences here. The claims to divinity in Devils and Gods, the mythic allegory in Dragon, and the dense metaphor in Dark Side of the Sun are all about elevating human consciousness within the firm boundaries of a stable mind. In other words, the album feels practical, awake, alert; its discussion mandates that we are able to apply our observations to a world we must recognize as recognized by others.

Texture: Listeners are voyeurs. There are political references we can decipher, sure, but the gossip involves plenty of strangers as well. The reason this doesn't result in inscrutability is because, even if we don't know these people, we know how they relate to each other. Our interpretation, therefore, is possible, but limited and conditional.

Texture: The album has a whiff of the esoteric to it. It was a core inspiration for me for The Silurians. If it happens at night, it also happens in the presence of wind. So I end up imagining some coffee and wine, five friends sitting up all night, talking, in a wooden cottage, surrounded by conifers, high on a hill, close to dunes, and close to a lake...

That is the texture, as I see it, of American Doll Posse.

END OF POST.