Now I don't mind / A dirty girl

American Doll Posse doesn't either. Nor do a handful of men...

I didn't listen to any pre-released songs off Tori Amos's most recent album, nor did I read any reviews or attempt to understand her concept when I first got it. The idea of yet another concept album bothered me - after Strange Little Girls and Scarlet's Walk, not to mention that most of her other albums hinge on such strong themes that they come dangerously within earshot of the conceptual, did we really need more ethereal feminism shoved down our throats?*

I thought not, and I listened to the album with ignorance of the concept. Until now. A few weeks with the album, and the sudden realization that this is perhaps Tori's most sexual release to date, sparked my interest in album reviews and concept knowledge.
The attention-getting tracks "Teenage Hustling" and "Body and Soul" hit my carnal brain hard, and I couldn't help but look up which Tori alter-ego was behind these songs (not to mention thinking that, along with "Fat Slut" and Pip's other songs, they should be submitted to Fetish Exchange's list of good scene music). Who was behind the other songs I was drawn to (most notably "You Can Bring Your Dog," "Secret Spell," and "Bouncing Off Clouds")? Was I identifying more with one Doll than the others? Apparently: Pip and Santa with a dash of Clyde.
Who are these girls?, I wondered.

Turns out they're not girls. And turns out Tori's concept works beautifully. The American Doll Posse consists of "five very different women, each representing various aspects of modern woman as a whole." Therefore, I am not just Pip, or Santa, or Clyde. I'm a combination of all five personas - in fact, every woman is. No surprise that I'm more Pip than the others though.
This is where the concept works - Tori has broken down women's place in contemporary society into the "strange little boxes" women find themselves in today. According to her, they often end up "muzzled" in these roles, and "they don’t quite know how they got there." A press release issued for the album called ADP "the dismembered feminine re–membered." And oh how accurate that description is. Tori disperses women's roles throughout five characters, then puts them back together as an album that feels just cohesive enough to form one being, yet disjointed enough to prove that women will never truly be able to reconcile all these positions. (Quotes from Attitude magazine interview).

Uncut called ADP "a return to more conventional songwriting form."
Blender called it " maddeningly self–important, [and] wigged out."
MOJO noted that Tori's drive to create concept albums makes her worthy of "[t]op marks for willful eccentricity," but that, as with her other recent releases, only a few tracks stand out, and "less is more."
Right, correct, and precise. But I wonder how Uncut decided ADP is more accessible than "the difficult concepts of Scarlet’s Walk and The Beekeeper," or how Blender figured it's "[t]exturally, ... a middle ground between her searing early album Under the Pink and the sun–dappled 2005 The Beekeeper." SW and Beekeeper are surely more understandable than ADP, and texturally, the album is certainly darker than both UtP and Beekeeper. In my opinion, it's sonically most similar to Choirgirl, and infinitely gutsier theme-wise than her other recent releases.

*Her concept albums shove it down our throats. Her other albums leave it gracefully floating through our ears.

You better know / I'm at your door
(but you knocked first...)