Suffering souls

Amos and Chapman fail in making their pain universal | Arsenio Orteza

Amos (top) and Chapman/Handouts

At first the latest albums by the iconoclastic chanteuse Tori Amos and the contemporary-Christian stalwart Steven Curtis Chapman would seem to have little if anything in common.

An eccentric approach to Christmas and its attendant emotions, Amos' Midwinter Graces (Universal Republic) plays at times like a game of "gotcha," with well-known verses that end in trick refrains ("This, this is Christ the king / whom shepherds guard and angels sing" becomes "This is winter's gift. / This is what begins") and sneaky pagan interpolations ("as men of old have sung" in "Holly, Ivy and Rose" [aka "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming"] becomes "by ancient sibyls sung").

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December 05, 2009, Vol. 24, No. 24

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