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Midwinter Graces is 12 tracks long, a perfect length, and most of the production is spot-on.
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Amos sounds so tranquil she could almost be floating, but the stateliness of the orchestral backing keeps the songs grounded.
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Her latest release, Midwinter Graces, is a typically provocative-in the best possible way-entry in the yuletide canon.
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Midwinter Graces succeeds where so many other holiday classics fail miserably. I never thought I'd say this, but with Midwinter Graces, Amos has made a holiday album that deserves to sit alongside those classics that you'll actualy listen to this winter.
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Thanks to some familiar melodies, it can sometimes seem seasonally appropriate, but it always seems purely Tori, who has somehow managed to deliver an easy listening version of all her signatures in one tidy, not so-Christmasy, package.
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As a subversion of religious themes, Midwinter misses the mark entirely; as a traditional holiday album courtesy of one of Christianity's most astute pop cultural critics, it's an ironic, pleasantly competent oddity.
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Perhaps where Midwinter Graces suffers most is that it will be resigned to the world of the holiday album, making brief appearances from only late November to early January, garnering at most a passing mention the rest of the year. At the very least, though, it is a holiday record that will be remembered once a year.
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Q MagazineIf Bob Dylan can do it, so can Tori Amos, whose own nod to the festive season, Midwinter Graces, is a rather more palatable, ornately arranged selection of self-penned songs and such carols as Star Of wonder and Emmanuel. [Jan 2010, p. 126]
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Amos fails to find an entryway into these songs that justifies her willingness to bury her personality inside them, ending up with a well-meaning but ultimately inessential vanity project.
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FilterAmos said she wanted to reclaim the songs from religious appropriations, but in the end, she just barely save us all from complete shame. [Holiday 2009, p. 98]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 78 out of 86
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Mixed: 5 out of 86
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Negative: 3 out of 86
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Dec 27, 2011
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KrissyGNov 26, 2009
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ellyNov 26, 2009The only christmas-themed album which I would listen to all year long. It's always nice to hear Tori sing some pretty songs I love her voice.