Comments on Night of Hunters, from a fan

UPDATE:

The guy who has written these notes is Martijn Tulp, and we want to thank him and Undented website, for letting us know this!

Hi, toriphiles!

As some of you didn't see these notes taken from Unforumzed, and don't speak portuguese to understand the translated material, we are publishing them in english.
Enjoy it!

Well the opening is kind of a little like Raining Blood, you know, ominous, and then there are these violin 'plucks' and then very elaborate, aggressive and dramatic quartet and piano playing. The first line is like "That is not my blood on the bedroom floor/ that is not my glass that I threw before". The song is kind of angry (I'm listening to it for the 2nd time now). After the first part of the song, there's a quite lengthy instrumental bit, then a part that is all doubled vocals, where she sings "shattering sea/ closing my eyes". Then another part with vocals, and again an instrumental bit with angry piano playing that sounds like the intro of the concert for RAINN, then again "that is not my blood on the bedroom floor/ that is not my glass that I threw before". I mean it's definitely not a 'pop' song. You wouldn't be able to just add drums and bass to it and turn it into a more conventional 'pop' song that way.

Shattering Sea is pretty bombastic, very interesting and unlike anything she’s done in the past couple of years in terms of melody. That’s Tash who she duets with one Snowblind, right? Her voice has matured. Track 3 is based on Pavane (for a a dead princess) by Ravel. There is no need for the track to be so incredibly long, unless there’s this amazing lyrical progression that I failed to noticed.

Fearlessness has this nice chorus of Tori singing to herself: “Listen to your word (?) / You can hear me”.

Cactus practice - It’s playing right now. Not embarassing at all, but Tash’s vocal isn’t that great on this track, I think. I can’t really understand every single word though, so it’s hard to understand all the lyrics.

Could it be possible that Tash isn’t on Snowblind after all, that she’s only on Cactus Practice? They don’t really sound like the same person? The one on Cactus Practice sounds much more like the vocal that Tash did on Midwinter Graces. Again, I’m hearing this for the first time so I could be horribly wrong.

Star Whisperer has a really really pretty piano part in the middle that reminds me of Tori’s improvs, but there’s a really weird glitch on 4:25. Glitch or no glitch, while Battle Of Trees seems to be a bit too long for its own good, Star Whisperer really changes and evolves. Love it so far.

It doesn’t really remind me of any Tori Amos album in particular, I guess, though there is definitely some Midwinter Graces in there. In terms of style, it reminds me or Rufus Wainwright’s last album, meaning that all the tracks kind of seem very samey initially, because of the lack of drums and stuff (though Tori’s album is obviously more layered because of the quartet and other instruments). And it also reminds me of the Penelope sound cycle here and there (the one Shara Worden did with Sarah Kirkland Snider).
The vocals are kind of the same as her recent studio output. Not as bad as certain live shows, but not as powerful as stuff from earlier in her career.

Definitely no showtunes, if that’s what you mean by a bad broadway play.

It’s very hard to describe. Without paying really close attention to the lyrics, I’m not getting a really strong emotional tone from the tracks yet, though some sound kind of forlorn I guess.

Oh, Seven Sisters is completely instrumental (some of you have been waiting for something like that for a good while, right?), quite speedy piano playing, and there’s also a… Flute? Woodwind? Oboe?

Carry: “You will not ever be forgotten by me / in the procession of the mighty stars” and I can’t really understand the rest. “Here I will carry, carry, carry you forever”.

It’s nice to see Tori finally not trying so hard to have a pop single on an album. Nothing on the album sounds like single material and I’m not sure this will sell well with her current casual fanbase. Or maybe it will, because it’s quite different from stuff she’s done these past couple of years.

Yeah. This is definitely not pop, and there’s no Mac Aladdin to come in and ruin a perfectly good track halfway through. The songs are really different from recent stuff she’s done with Matt and Jon, and a lot closer to Midwinter Graces. Well, it’s not like (the track) Little Earthquakes or Precious Things or something like that, but it’s more interesting than her recent ‘pop’ albums.

On the second listen, the length of Battle of Trees didn't bother him at all.

Some lyrics from The Chase (not sure how he felt about them):

Tori: I'll be the hare
Tash: Then I'm the grey hound, chasing after you
Tori: Then I will change my frequency to a fish that thinks
Tash: Then you will find yourself in the pause of the otter near her jaws
Tori: Then I'll grow my wings as a flying thing

And of course "Watch me change to a grain of corn".

These comments were made by dollsbitches.