At the dawn of the CD era, it made sense on some level to be this 'generous' with listeners. And if there is a problem with Abnormally Attracted to Sin, this is it: it's 73 minutes long. The track listing goes on, and on, and on, and on.

'Maybe California' is a simple, straightforward modern pop ballad.

It's a rocker as far as her songs go, and works beautifully. 'Strong Black Vine,' with its echoes of Led Zeppelin's 'Kashmir' in the intro, tosses Amos back into her Jerry Lee Lewis dilemma: she loves and hates religious faith, and is both ensnared by it and saved by it. The refrain creates a bit of a hook, at least enough to catch the ear, but that's all. But then there is the single, 'Welcome to England,' whose 4/4 loop, drifting piano, and blend of guitars (electric and acoustic), strings, and ambient sounds is rudimentary Amos at best, and boring at worst. Certainly the opener 'Give,' with its trip-hop rhythmic landscape and shifting backing vocals, slippery synth bass, and acoustic piano is beautifully constructed with a melody line that glides along a minor-key slant with a Middle Eastern tinge, and its lyric is both poignant and provocative.

There are songs on Abnormally Attracted to Sin that are as strong as anything she's written. Not that there's anything at all wrong with that. The scope of this set in comparison with the previous two offerings seems more like a retrenchment than anything else. Those recordings, fine though they may have been, stretched the artist's reputation and the patience of her fans to the breaking point based on her record sales, she whittled them down to simply the Tori cult (not a derogatory term, since many of her fans are proud to refer to themselves that way). After the high conceptualism that lorded over 2005's The Beekeeper and 2007's American Doll Posse, singer and songwriter Tori Amos has decided to return to the relatively simple songs-as-songs approach on Abnormally Attracted to Sin.

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