Tori Amos

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.

this album is better than the last two but only marginally

She should just make album covers.

She should just make albums and leave out the embarrassing concepts, covers and about half of the AOR-leaning tracks.

she's only had about 4 decent album covers in her career. pele, choirgirl, strange little girls, american doll posse.

cover versions, though: more of these. she covered 'smooth operator' at the gig on mon! it was great.

i guess little earthquakes, under the pink, venus and scarlet's walk are boring covers rather than bad, kind of like "ehh, at least she looks prettyish". beekeeper and the new one are awful though

and there's her version of "ring my bell" of course.

i guess little earthquakes, under the pink, venus and scarlet's walk are boring covers rather than bad

Clearly though, Under the Pink is her best album cover. Someone back me up on this.

yeap retty much!

i love the miss 80's ethereality-ness of it

guys remember how good "fat slut" was??

like a glimmer of hope

why is mr. zebra so beautiful, ramzi?

cuz it's like

she just stepped over to the piano

and it just came out

http://i38.tinypic.com/34dhrp3.jpg

Why, Tori? Why?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2Ldt2b-SC8

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