‘In Times of Dragons’ is Amos’s allegory of democratic demise with a cast of nomadic spirits
It was only a matter of time before Tori Amos shapeshifted into some greater mythical creature. She’s already battled her share of demons, arming herself with a chain of alter-egos from animals to mythological deities to tell her stories. She split her personality between a dozen different women to reinterpret songs by Lou Reed, Tom Waits, Neil Young, and Slayer with Strange Little Girls. Scarlet’s Walk then channeled a nomadic protagonist on a road trip through the altered states of America post-9/11, and there were four more personas, archetypes of goddesses pulled from Greek mythology, exploring political disillusionment on American Doll Posse.
Amos embodies something considerably bigger, 18 albums in on In Times of Dragons. To combat the lizard demon masquerading as her patriarchal billionaire husband, she transforms into the only being that can topple him: a dragon.
In Times of Dragons is not as fantastical as it sounds. It’s Amos documenting the fight to save democracy in America now, with “Shush” setting the scene, introducing her alternate reality and a controlling antagonist. The lizard demon represents all the billionaires who have congressmen, senators, and CEOs answering to them. This man-demon is condescending and threatening and denounces any accord between freedom and democracy—There is hierarchy / You should be pleased to serve in any capacity / I’m not asking.
He puts her in her place, telling her what those beautiful lips are good for, and calls her Cassandra, alluding to the priestess cursed by Apollo in Greek mythology, whose prophecies were dismissed.
For the sake of the storyline, Amos tapped into the billionaire mindset, reverting back to the 1990s when she once considered partnering with her very own “lizard demon.”
“This might surprise you, but in the ’90s, I had options,” says Amos. “I’m not just a rock roadie’s wife. I had to own up to this, this side to me, which is the flaw in Tori, and in the story. There can be something sexy about those guys, because power is an aphrodisiac, and some of those men like to collect things, whether it’s a Matisse or an accessory on his arm.”
On “Shush,” there’s even a small nod to her former self on Little Earthquakes’ “Silent All These Years” — I knew a girl who was silent all these years / Where is she?
“There is a side of me that could have been seduced with a lifestyle whereby you don’t have to ever work again,” says Amos. “I could see a part of myself in the ’90s, having been seduced by that, and because I knew that I was able to go full in.”
In between Amos’s lines, In Times of Dragons is a saga of survival introducing different muses along the way, from a real-life ancestor, a martyr who fell in love with Jesus, and a group of rugged women. To better connect to the Irish warrior, whom she first read about as a teen, Amos sought the assistance of medium and writer Noah Michelson, whom she refers to as her “gay witch from Brooklyn,” introduced earlier in “Provincetown.”
Another male figure, Lugh of the Long Arm, a god of light and master of many crafts in Celtic mythology, is the antithesis of the lizard demon and protects her during her transformation into a dragon. Toward the end of Amos’s epic, she finds refuge with Lugh, and dedicates a trilogy of songs to him: “Song of Sorrow,” “Flood,” and “Pyrite.”
To better connect to the Irish warrior she first read about as a teen, Amos sought the assistance of medium and writer Noah Michelson, her “gay witch from Brooklyn,” introduced earlier in “Provincetown.
“You may think I need to be committed for this,” laughs Amos, “but I literally reached out to Lugh through gateways from Brooklyn with Noah.” Amos has known Michelson for more than 30 years, since he first started going to her shows as a teenager.
Before Lughnasadh, the annual harvest festival named in honor of the god and celebrated in Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man, Amos asked Michelson to make the “introduction.”
“It’s not like I’ve had a secret crush on Lugh for decades, but I reached out to him for some reason,” she jests. “I asked Noah, ‘Please tell Lugh that I’m writing this work. Does he have any thoughts? Democracy is on the line, and the threat of tyranny increases by the day, so if he has any guidance, I’m open.’”
By then, Amos knew the album would be called In Times of Dragons and had already written “Shush” and closer “23 Peaks,” the final acceptance of herself as the dragon. After connecting via Michelson, Amos said the responses from Lugh flooded in.
“In some ways Lugh is very much a part of guiding me about subject matter and how to see things as a warrior poet, and he’s not on this plane, so he sees things from a different vantage point,” says Amos.
“He [Lugh of the Long Arm] would say to me, ‘When you’re dealing in high concept like you are, there are risks and rewards, but please do not forget about the emotional aspect of Tori, and what you were going through as a woman and what we need as the listener for you to share with us. And above all, if you’re going to fight this fight, why are you fighting it? I will tell you, it’s for the love. It’s always been for the love.’”
Then, Amos adds, Lugh told her, “Do not forget your song of sorrow.”
Before the triad of songs around Lugh, Amos plants the deity in “Strawberry Moon”—Now some Celtic god, an ancient love, keeping me from harm, Lugh of The Long Arm—one of three songs she co-wrote with her daughter Natashya Lórien “Tash” Hawley.
“Strawberry Moon” tells the tale of her fractured relationship with her daughter, another casualty of her former billionaire partner. “She couldn’t align with this man ever or his belief system,” says Amos, “so it fractured the relationship between mother and daughter.”
Amos first worked with her daughter on her 2009 album Midwinter Graces when a 9-year-old Tash sang backing vocals on “Holly, Ivy and Rose.” The mother-daughter collaborations continued with Tash singing on Night of Hunters (2011), Unrepentant Geraldines (2014), Native Invader (2017), and Ocean to Ocean (2021).
Tash recently completed her law studies in Washington, D.C., and it was her insight into the fractures in the system that also helped guide the immediacy of the album.
“There’s a level of multiple crises that seem to be happening at a very fast rate,” Amos says. “There’s an urgency, no question, and it’s the artist’s job to energize people to have the strength and the fortitude to not fall asleep during the sun.”
For In Times of Dragons, Tash had “little seeds” of songs, says Amos, which they built upon, writing “Veins,” a call-and-response duet around inherited traits, and paired their vocals again on “Stronger Together.”
During her journey, strong female characters appear to Amos, some based on real people, including a folk-pop tale based on her real-life great-great-grandmother, “Fanny Faudrey,” who lived near an apothecary and empowers her journey.
“I wanted strong women in the narrative,” says Amos, who also revisits the story of Teresa of Ávila, a 16th-century Carmelite nun shamed for falling in love with God, on the song “St. Teresa.” Heavily inspired by Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s 1652 sculpture, The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, depicting an angel piercing the saint’s heart—Your soul woke up in flames from a spear by an angel. Teresa reflects Amos’s rejection of shame and regret during her transformation.
“The guilt that she had for her passionate love for God and Jesus is laced in her story and guided her path, and I was finding that I was developing a passionate emotion for Lugh [of] the Long Arm,” says Amos. “He wasn’t writing to me like a human man through that lens. He was writing from a place where there isn’t judgment or shame based around desire, and that really captivated me: the idea of romance and desire and spirituality all being able to be aligned, whereby we don’t segregate.”
The “Gasoline Girls” are based on a group of women Amos knows who “have no problem taking on any man,” she says. “I’ll always share a plate of spaghetti with a humorous lesbian—always,” adds Amos. In the story, she is entrusted to the collective of powerful women, who put themselves in danger to keep her safe.
In between her feminine muses, Amos offers a short interlude, “Ode to Minnesota,” the final song she wrote for In Times of Dragons, reinforcing the power of unity during divisive times and referencing Sam Cooke and Bob Dylan’s earlier protests: Change gonna come Minnesota / Change blows in like the wind.
Everything was clear around the plot of In Times of Dragons for Amos, but what surprised her most was the Southern Gothic component and the woman she became in “Shush.” Metaphorically, Amos says her transformation into a dragon also reflects her experience with menopause, which remains a more taboo subject.
“I tell the 30-somethings, hopefully there’ll be more discoveries and better answers by the time you get there, and we’ll be talking about it,” says Amos. “We won’t need to suffer in silence, like so many women of my generation have had to do.”
Considering the state of democracy now, Amos isn’t sure where it’s headed.
“I don’t know where we’re going,” she says. “I observe a trauma energy. People are traumatized, and I’ve been nearly frozen, but what we need to do is propel others.”
This story also appears at Spinmagazine.com.
Tina Eves 