Meet Tori's Posse

Meet Tori's Posse

Feature, By Christian Taylor, 28th March, 2007

She’s been dubbed one of the most outspoken, creative singer/songwriters of our time and her ninth studio album is almost here. This time she’s bringing a posse of ladies with her – five distinct characters, each with their own hidden blogs out there somewhere in cyberspace, who each combine to make one whole woman.

Each character comes with her own look, her own fashion sensibility, and each have their own unique voice and opinion on their place within a man’s world.

“Being a preacher’s daughter, I understood the politic of religion and so I really began to see how now that we’re in a very right-wing Christian time,” says Tori. “Women are divided into the mother and the whore. It’s very black and white. As a piano player, I understand black and white very well. And it’s just not acceptable outside of a keyboard.”

So, time to meet the ladies. Isabel [centre] is a photographer and she’s the most political. On the new album she belts out the track “Yo George” which is a shout-out to Mr Bush and the hideously dark trail that he’s taken the world down. She also closes the CD with the anti-war anthem, “Dark Side of the Sun.”

Then there’s Clyde [second from left] who is a little lost. She wears her emotional wounds on her sleeve, but remains idealistic. “She is trying to figure out what she believes in and she is dealing with having been disappointed in her life,” says Tori.

Pip [far right] is a confident fighter. “Being the warrior that she is, [she] does confront issues and sometimes it’s explosive, but I really love her energy and her casual approach to rubber,” says Tori.

Santa [left] is the most sensual of the four. “Santa is somebody who’s a girl’s girl,” Amos says. “She understands her fellow sisters and she believes that there is enough love and passion out there for everyone. But she won’t accept that there is something perverted about being very sensual and she won’t drink shame with her sensuality.”

The fifth girl of course, is Tori [second from right], who surprisingly, was one of the hardest characters for Amos to get her head around. “What I ‘m trying to tell other women is they have their own version of the compartmentalised feminine which may have been repressed in each one of them,” Amos says. “For many years I have been an image; that isn’t necessarily who I am completely. I have made certain choices and that doesn’t mean that those choices are the whole story. I think these women are showing me that I have not explored honest extensions of the self who are now as real as the redhead.”

In many ways, all of her work has been building up to this album. “I was exploring one personality at a time.”

Tori has told fans that this Easter she’s not hosting an Easter egg hunt, she’s hosting a posse hunt. People are urged to get out there and search for the girls’ blogs. They’re well hidden though – and they exist amongst a sea of fakes that have unsurprisingly sprung up.

“You’ll get to know the girls through the photographs, through the songs, and there needs to be writings,” Tori says. “Their relationships get more complicated. I love the idea of this multimedia project being improvisational. They learn and they grow in front of everybody’s eyes.”

Tori has revealed that each show on the tour will open with a different girl, then Tori will take over. “They will have their own wardrobes, of course, they are their own women. So I don’t know who will be going on that night until sound check of that day. I think it depends upon what’s happening in the world.”

And should Australians start preparing now to meet the girls face to face? We think so. Tori has confirmed that the world tour will run from May and will continue until December, although as yet Sony BMG haven’t officially confirmed her alleged Australian tour dates for September.

In the meantime, as we wait, Tori has issued a warning. “This [world] has been created by the patriarchal authority. And I’m coming after them.”