She may be the daughter of a reverend, but
Tori Amos never seemed the likeliest candidate for a Christmas album; she might sing about "God", but her music always seemed secular and never seasonal, but in a year that brought holiday albums by
Bob Dylan and
Sting, it makes perfect sense that
Tori should deliver one, too.
Amos' entry,
Midwinter Graces, may be as unlikely as
Dylan's, but it's closer in tenor to
Sting's: it captures the wintriness of the season.
Tori reworks many familiar carols, tweaking lyrics and pushing them together into a medley, so they sound quite similar to the newly written tunes that comprise the rest of the record. Thanks to some familiar melodies, it can sometimes seem seasonally appropriate, but it always seems purely
Tori.
–
Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi