I became a fan of Tori Amos' sometime after "Boys for Pele" was released in 1996 but consider myself somewhat of an "old school" fan, as I haven't found her last few albums to be nearly as satisfying as the first three (or four). "To Venus and Back" had some wonderful tracks but didn't quite cut it overall and "Strange Little Girls" was just... strange. "Scarlet's Walk" offers fragments of the old Tori while still exhibiting progression as an artist, but I'm still not getting the feeling her music used to give me.

It has a good mix of the "piano" songs and the "band" songs, and starts off wonderfully with "Amber Waves" and "A Sorta Fairytale", both very strong. "Wednesday" is reminiscent of old tunes such as "The Wrong Band" and in fact I think a lot of the tracks are "Under the Pink"-esque (the choruses to both "Strange" and "Carbon" sound as if they could have come from the period inbetween "Under the Pink" and "Boys for Pele"). The final track, "Gold Dust", has a beautiful string arrangement - one of those that you can actually feel inside of you.

Now that I listen to each track individually I find most of them to be really beautiful, unique songs, but listening to the album in its entirety as background music seems to mesh them all together for me. You need a good hour to sit down and really listen to this record. Read the lyrics along with the songs and go on the journey across America with Scarlet.

As an album, this is probably Tori's best since "Boys for Pele" but it needs some time and attention to detail to be fully appreciated.