Tori Amos

her voice, holy christ. on "hotel" especially.

'playboy mommy' is a stone-cold classic ballad, really - the "played glo-ri-a, talkin' 'bout ho-sanna" bit always gets me. and i love the way the lyrics should be an apology, but really aren't: the narrative persona there is probably one of my favourites ever.

The first listen was "wtf?", the second "wait, no this is actually awful", the third - pure roffle! I listened a couple more times after that, and I'm now more baffled about Tori luv than ever.

Only, every time I listen to Scarlet's Walk I get the sense that really I should love it. The lyrics are probably the best she's done on the whole... at first they seem almost too straightforward but they actually come across as much more complex and intricate on paper, lots of extended metaphors and back'n'forth conversations and lovely turns of phrase which shouldn't be able to fit into song structures but somehow do.

And, track by track, the music is actually pretty good, thoughtful arrangements, excellent multi-harmonising vocals, lovely melodies, lots of variety in Tori's phrasing.

I can even see the bits which are supposed to totally blow my away - "Gimme gimme gimmee" in "Sweet Sangria", "your invading this thing you call love" in "Taxi Ride", "you used to look my good right in the eye" in "Pancake", "through the eyes of Laura Mars" in "Gold Dust".

So why doesn't it work out that why? Why isn't this record as effective as it should be?

I'm starting to think that maybe it's just too articulate, that maybe Tori actually finally understood what song she was trying to sing too well.

On Boys for Pele (by far her most cryptic album) you get these songs with ridiculous lyrics but enormous musical and emotional power ("Father Lucifer", "Marianne") - it's like the ridiculous lyrics represent the site of a blockage, an inability on the writer's part to express herself, which the music and the vocals have to burst through - such that "Timmy and that purple monkey are all down at Bobby's house" seems impregnated with meaning and consequence in a manner you could never divine from the lyric sheet.

There are quite a few songs on Scarlet's Walk which are passionate - deeply nostalgic, angry, bitter, crestfallen etc. - but the songs always feel aware of their emotions, self-reflective and resigned in a way that can work really well for other artists (Ani DiFranco springs to mind) but seems to undercut the brute force of Tori's music somehow.

This theory is probably flawed in so far as the more likely scenario is the music came first and the lyrics are added in piecemeal, but it seems to explain why it is that there's at times almost an inverse relationship between lyrical clarity and musical effect in Tori's work.

the scarlet's walk lyrics, more than anything else about that album, turn me off: instead of genuinely impenetrable metaphor like eg that line from 'marianne' which tim quoted, and much of 'riot poof', there's heavy-handed genuine metaphor about putting snowflakes under microscopes. it's all very...conscious, in every sense of the word, and she deliberately tones down musical and lyrical excess in favour of, i guess, what she sees as the Important Theme.

'a sorta fairytale' and 'gold dust' manage to slip under this somehow.

http://www.rkstar.com/video/playvid?qtfile=musicvideo/tramstft

i'm not sure whether to recommend 'datura', 'juárez' and 'raspberry swirl' to fandango or not!

I think I'd end up listening to other songs for the roffle factor right now after that last one though :( Plus, I should probably lend an ear to the other new stuff in my never-quite-empty 'incoming' folder right now.

Politely declining more gifts of Tori, with thanks, for the moment ;)

I did say thanks for that other one before though! I didn't download just to shoot it down, honestly :(

Whereas with something like "Marianne", I think there are the bits which are related to the subject matter ("And they said Marianne killed herself, and I said 'not a chance'") and there are the bits which are just free association ("tuna, rubber, a little blubber in my igloo")

i think those are the most successful songs of hers as well, the ones that are couched in elaborate and seemingly confused metaphors in which she introduces brief moments of startling lucidity (cf. "baker baker," with its extended baking metaphor that's interrupted with snippets of some larger story ("i guess you heard he's gone to LA") and really abrupt moments where she seems to let her guard down ("time, thought i'd made friends with time, thought we'd be flying...")). you sense that she's not consciously playing these components off each other for shock/absurdist value but rather that she's negotiating with herself while singing these songs, as if just playing the music is such an overwhelming, confusing experience for her that she's torn between employing either elliptical turns of phrase or full-blown confessionals. if she leaned too much in either direction i doubt i'd find her as fascinating as i do.

and under the pink in general is just really astounding, isn't it?

i agree with jody re: the confessional stuff. i think this is a point which tim has discussed in depth somewhere else, but what makes tori's take on confessional lyrics so interesting is the way the confessional tone, the overall gist of what she's trying to say, comes across so loud and clear even as she erodes the distinction between meaning and non-meaning, brutally straightforward (and v quitable) lyrics and lines which seem to be purely linguistic/phonetic experiments.

I'm trying to avoid thinking of Scarlet's Walk as a concept album because it was approaching it from that perspective which made me not bother to listen to it much at all for 2-3 years.

I see what you mean about the type of imagery that Scarlet's Walk employs, in terms of sheer subject matter the imagery is much more safe/Lilith-ish than her previous stuff. But I think that going in that direction is not automatically a bad thing - in the Kate Bush thread we've been discussing a lot the domesticity/"blandness" of the album, and I think Jody is correct when she says that, even if Aerial *is* "bland", it makes of blandness something great, makes us question why "bland" comes with negative connotations.

I'm not saying Scarlet's Walk achieves something similar, but listening to the two albums consecutively has made me question the narrative I spun to explain the mildness of my enjoyment w/r/t this album. It may well be that Scarlet's Walk is indeed bland in a bad way, but just saying that by itself no longer seems satisfactory for me, as it has been previously.

Would you say The Beekeeper is better or worse, Lex? Jody?

I'm not dissing "Marianne" by the way, that's one of my favourite tracks! I'm just trying to take a devil's advocate position with myself because the tastes here are something I don't feel I've gotten to the bottom of yet, i.e. I know what I'm responding to but I'm still not entirely sure why.

there's a line about tuna in laura nyro's "captain saint lucifer," which is about, um... somehow sex and the devil are involved.

buckles off shingles
off a cockleshell on norway basin
coke and tuna
boots and roses from russia

i need to listen to both albums again. the beekeeper is fresher in my mind, having listened to it in its entirety once when it came out (and i've still got the tracks i like on my ipod).

the beekeeper is much much worse than scarlet's walk, in my kinder moments i can almost convince myself that the only problem with the latter is that it's overlong. most of the beekeeper isn't just dull or disappointing, but just terrible. whereas i can put the flaws in scarlet's walk down to wrong-headed conscious decisions, the beekeeper is just stale, the sound of completely dried-up inspiration.

i actually think knowing about the scarlet's walk concept helped me enjoy the album a little more, esp the road trip angle which could explain her sonic choices - it's a very feminine, soft take on drivetime music.

"It's ending, again, just before it begins. Look, there's no point in me pretending I don't think this is the best album ever. I already said that from the choirgirl hotel was the best album of the Nineties, and that listening to Tori play live is the most transcendent musical thing I've ever experienced, but this album is greater than either of those. This is the first Tori Amos album that is actually better than hearing her play the songs live. It's the complete control that Little Earthquakes didn't have, it's a better rock album than Rumours, it's more brilliant in its discipline than Hounds of Love or The Speckless Sky. It's better than even music maybe has the right to be, more precious than every assembled loss it arises from. It's bigger than me or you, and I tell you quite literally that I don't understand how a person subject to the same mortal rules could have made it. I've stayed up all night with it, tonight, with a computer in front of me and my hands on the keys, and have only really tried to type around it. The short version of this reaction, and the truest one, would simply have been silence; these thousands of evasive words and irrelevant digressions are merely a version of speechlessness. There is nothing I claim I can add to this album, no obscure points I think I should help to clarify, no clear truths I would hope to obfuscate. It doesn't get any better than this, I don't think it can't be made any better than it is by any action of mine, and trying to convince you of any of that through argument is too heartbreaking a prospect to contemplate. This is my apotheosis, and if you won't let it be yours, I hope you have some other one in mind. "Sometimes I hear my voice", Tori said, amazed, in "Silent All These Years". I hear my voice almost all the time. Too much. It's Thursday morning, and I'm going to shut up now."

"There is a certain place from which Scarlet's Walk looks like the best album ever made by a human being"

And the idea of this sort of fascinates me, perhaps precisely because of its perversity. What is this place?

i am so glad i am going back home on friday, because among other things i'm going to reclaim the tori cds i left there that i've been inspired to listen to again (mostly thanks to this thread).

'pancake' reminds me of something, too. i can't work out what style she's aiming for with it. it's one of the better moments of the album anyway.

i think part of the problem would have been heightened expectation - as far as i'm concerned pele through to venus was an extraordinary creative flowering for tori, and scarlet's walk falls some way short of that peak.

tim and jody, what do you think of strange little girls? i really, really, like it. her cover of '97 bonnie & clyde' is chilling. the concept actually vaguely makes sense!

haha and the beekeeper : the red shoes (that's pretty harsh on the red shoes though)

i like about half of it. it would have made a very cool EP. she should have left off "happiness is a warm gun," "heart of gold," i'm not in love," and "enjoy the silence." sort of on the fence about "i don't like mondays."

"real men" is too good to be stuck way back there at the end.

i like the way she chose ultra-canonical males to deconstruct so completely.

Introducing Norway's answer to Tori Amos - Ingrid Olava.

any Tori fans around - give it a listen, and a verdict:

MIC Norway: Ingrid Olava

Ingrid Olava

01/16/2008

The first single has been released form what is set be one of the most talked about records of the year, Ingrid Olava's debut Juliet Wishes

Album released by EMI Norway in early March.

listen: MySpace.com - Ingrid Olava - - Pop / Indie / Jazz - www.myspace.com/ingridolava

Heard her new album today. What the fuck happened to this woman. Don't even get me started on this.

we didn't.

Hmm?

(I mean, come on. Anonymous bullying? Is your dick THAT small?)

I can't listen to anything before Scarlett's Walk thanks to some personal associations, and conveniently enough I hate everything since Scarlett's Walk.

"sorta fairytale" still fucks me up but good.

blimey.

Well, it wasn't this morning, but that's btw.

I'm saying "we didn't get you started", but by all means continue.

(xpost)

Scarlet's Walk is her best album. Shhh, it's a secret.

Haven't heard anything since, though.

i saw her live last night for the first time in years - forgot what a terrific performer she is, and was also reminded that 'cool on your island', 'putting the damage on' and 'leather' are incredible songs. have also met her in person twice in two weeks, it was kind of weird not to be overawed.

the new album's not bad, as expected you have to wearily trudge through 94938343 songs to pick out the good ones but i'm definitely feeling 'give', 'strong black vine', 'that guy' and 'fast horse' at least.

but your momma ain't new york, she is pure tennessee

Actually I think I'd like Starling without the horrible guitars :(

bahahaha Hoos I have the same deal except w/'To Venus & Back.' Actually I will still rock Choirgirl every once in a while but mostly we've grown in our own different directions, she and I.

She should just make album covers.

in the mid-90s my best friend was in the peace corps in diffa, niger, which is at the ass end of the ass end of countries not so far from what used to be lake chad but also 820 miles over impossibly slow roads to niamey, the capital

he had no books and was more or less dependent on me to send him anything related to then-current western culture. (so naturally i sent him THE EIGER SANCTION by TREVANIAN, which had long been made into a truly awful movie featuring clint eastwood, george kennedy and jack cassidy)

but i also sent him mixtapes, one of which included the jawbox cover of 'cornflake girl' (which is great)

a few years later i met one of his fellow peace corps volunteers, named Pcarolyn (but the P was silent). she asked me if i was the person who'd sent the jawbox cover of 'cornflake girl' to michael; i said yes, and she said 'i didn't like that'

anyway that was 25 years ago and i'm told she's since dropped the ~ silent P ~ but also she was super nice and now this story is all i can think about when i consider 'under the pink'

LOL

Under The Ink

Yeah, I think Under the Pink just edges Little Earthquakes as her best album. Like Cow_Art I was disappointed in Boys for Pele, but unlike them I've never gotten into it and indeed it's where I got off the bus.

Little Earthquakes had three producers working on it at different times, which I think helps to account for its fairly nondescript sound. Under the Pink was a real step up in production values.

I don't think Tori Amos really figured out a "signature sound" until Choirgirl. I can't pick between which is "my favourite" of the first three, but I am pretty sure Choirgirl is "her best" in terms of realisation and execution. Those first three albums sound like albums of prototypes, buying plots of land and doing some surveying. Surveyor-Tori might be my favourite mode of hers, as a listener. Sometimes it gets too safe ("China"), or zany ("Leather", "Mr. Zebra"), or theatre kid ("The Wrong Band", "Happy Phantom"), or annoying ("In The Springtime Of His Voodoo"), or fake-rawk ("Professional Widow"), or uncomfortable ("Me And A Gun"), but the risks feel riskier and the rewards feel greater.

I was reading about Under The Pink on wiki yesterday and seeing that there were song rankings ("God" is her 3rd best song! "Cornflake Girl" is #1!) and I was puzzling over my own ranking. When I try and draw one up, I find I'm listing the more "complete" songs and overlooking the deformed experiments. It doesn't feel right.

Like if I had to pick a Tori song to play at a party it'd def be "Cornflake Girl" or "Crucify", but if I had to take one song with me to the afterlife it'd be "Yes, Anastasia" (or "Mother", or "Here. In My Head")

got an angry snatch
girls you know what i mean

I put "Past the Mission" on a mixtape once, hoping to impress a girl. One of her friends later told me that she hated Tori Amos. Alas.

the piano work on Yes Anastasia is insane

so glad to have seen her once, sat front row. she fully rollicks on the piano.

got an angry snatch
girls you know what I mean

See... if "Voodoo" was just the body of the song I'd have a different feeling about it, because it's amazing, but that first minute of snarling always made me annoyed. But then again, maybe I'd think less of the song without it, who knows, it's definitely a beautiful strangething

so glad to have seen her once, sat front row. she fully rollicks on the piano.

Literally have never once seen her, which is crazy to consider

I put "Past the Mission" on a mixtape once, hoping to impress a girl. One of her friends later told me that she hated Tori Amos. Alas.

― Washington Post Malone (Ye Mad Puffin)

kind of riffing off this (nothing about you YMP) and thinking about my complicated feelings about amos as a cultural icon in this era

i had this sense in 1994 that amos was sort of a synecdoche for an entire gender, "me and a gun", that really kind of... i think overshadowed her early career. like #metoo if people just focused it all on one woman, one song. and honestly, that was how i, a fairly confused young person who thought of themselves as a "man" and wanted to understand What It Was Like Being A Woman, approached her music.

it was actually when boys for pele came out that i realized with some embarrassment that it was... kind of shitty to view someone like that. _boys for pele_ was _weird_, and to some extent amos herself was (unsurprisingly!) _weird_. "weird", that i understood. amos wasn't "every woman", she was _a_ woman.

and the thing was, like a lot of gen x shit, i think there was a lot of stuff people were trying to do back then that just wound up not going anywhere. not, like, because people _did it wrong_ or anything like that. she did these songs and they _were_ powerful, passionate songs, and people paid it lip service and nothing changed except that things got worse. the reason i was looking for a synecdoche was because i believed strongly that the way men viewed women, men treated women, needed to change, and listening to women was how you did that. and i failed at that for a couple of reasons... i wasn't ever a man, but that wasn't the major reason. the major reason was that i wasn't in a place where i could understand and acknowledge women as _individuals_. which is a problem that also underlaid my inability to understand _myself_ as a woman.

anyway as much as people seem to love those first couple records i really treasure that amos did find a distinctive individual voice. it doesn't seem like she was in an environment that made that sort of thing easy.

-

when i listen to something like "god" it makes me think of, i don't know, 1994. post-nirvana, labels were just throwing anything at the wall and seeing what would stick. sure, let's sign royal trux to a major label, why not? i get the sense that a lot of the label a&r people heard nirvana as the latest variety of electronic noise. and responded by saying "hey let's throw a lot of obnoxious noise on our songs, the kids seem to like that". (i don't think the guitar on "god" is "obnoxious noise", at least not in the sense that my hypothetical label people would have.) in that context "god" as a lead single makes sense!

god i love god

Agree but "Crucify" remains my sentimental favorite

With "Sorta Fairytale" a close second; it is the best driving song ever

Is "Sweet Dreams" the apotheosis, musically and lyrically, of the Poppy Bush Interzone?

I said this a while back about Voodoo (and in particular its intro) and I hold to it:

And maybe the very specific thing about Boys for Pele which is so far out, and which maybe makes it her greatest album in the final analysis, is how it places this particular quality of her performances at the centre of almost every song. Whereas on From The Choirgirl Hotel, if she wants to do southern boogie skronk, she fucking gets the band in, on "In The Springtime of his Voodoo" the centre is always always the piano (except when, bizarrely given the surrounding song, she switches over the harpsichord). The first minute and a half is in some ways one of the most astonishing things she ever did, the way she uses these exploratory, ruminative piano lines to trace out an idiom that is not even hers except by genetic extraction - and the pay-off when the crawling baseline and percussion come in is just massive.

I love that, Tim!

I myself feel like I’m bargaining for a wrap and a barista is growling at me about it for a minute before delivering the wrap I desire, but either way the wrap is delicious

those first four albums are an all-time great run

quite unfathomable

Listening to Pele again now and every time it gets better. There are moments and phrases within the songs that are incredibly rich: "and this little masochist is lifting up her dress." In Muhammad My Friend where she mentions having her own TV show and a cheesy little theme song wafts in.

The length of the album works for it too, in contrast to a lot of bloated discs from the same time.

Maybe it was ahead of its time? I feel like a doofus for writing it off. The production is amazing.

i think very much a grower, that's the way it happened to me. the strings are incredible and Marianne for me reshaped music. i imagine it must have felt like a big risk which i think is commendable, and feels like sometimes you have to do that to get at the best nuggets