Atlantic / Wea
2006
A Piano: The Collection
About This Album
A Piano: The Collection is a mammoth undertaking by Tori Amos and Rhino Records. This box set collects album cuts, B-sides, unedited and alternate versions, demos, and seven previously unissued cuts. Making one's way through it is to enter a labyrinth, a parallel but alternate universe that traces the development of the artist from her earliest recordings (with the exception of Y Kant Tori Read, of course) through her transformation as a conceptual songwriter, musician, and artisan who has moved tumultuously through the pop world without, it appears, ever losing her vision or sense of herself. Amos produced this set, and Rhino cross-licensed material from Epic as well. Amos annotates each track here in the handsome hardbound book that accompanies it, which also contains a boatload of photos and an essay by Lorraine Ali. The set comes packaged under a large plastic piano keyboard -- this aspect of it is simply irritating. The "piano as part of the package" has been done before -- and done better -- in other artists' retrospectives. It's cheesy.

The five discs here, however, cover virtually every part of Amos' iconic, often iconoclastic career. Virtually every part of Little Earthquakes is explored, which is why disc one is titled "Little Earthquakes Extended" (since basically three versions of the album were completed).
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 1,2 and 6)

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Disc 2 (try tracks 3,4 and 11)

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Disc 3 (try track 13)

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Disc 4 (try tracks 1 and 2)

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Disc 5 (try tracks 4,10,16 and 17)

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