Development
Following songwriting during and after Amos' five-month solo tour in 2005, recording sessions commenced in June 2006 with longtime collaborators Matt Chamberlain on percussion, Jon Evans on bass, and Mac Aladdin on guitars at Martian Engineering in Cornwall, like all of Amos' albums since From the Choirgirl Hotel (1998). Due to the musical composition and nature of the album, Amos' principal band mates were present in the recording studio from the beginning of the recording session. After a month of tracking work, Amos continued editing and recording for the remainder of the year, as well as working on the promotion for her career-spanning box set A Piano: The Collection. Mixing work was completed by February 2007, and the album title was announced through a press release on February 20.
Prior to its release, Amos revealed that the album is political in nature:
| “ | The main message of my new album is: the political is personal. This as opposed to the feminist statement from years ago that the personal is political. I know it has been said that it goes both ways, but we have to turn it around. We have to think like that. I’m now taking on subjects that I could not have been able to take on in my twenties. With Little Earthquakes I took on more personal things. But if you are going to be an American woman in 2007 with a real view on what is going on, you need to be brave, and you need to know that some people won’t want to look at it. | ” |
While Amos had hinted that she may bring back both the harpsichord (last used on Boys for Pele) and the Wurlitzer (used on Strange Little Girls and Scarlet's Walk), only the latter appeared on the track "Dark Side of the Sun". Before the album's release, she made several comments about bringing a "warrior woman" out, as well as stating that the record would be a very different chapter from what has come before.
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