also, fav pele lyrics? right now mine is
he said 1 + 1 is 2but Henry said that it was 3so it washere I am
also, of course, "got an angry snatch / girls you know what i mean"
― who is extremely unqualified to review this pop album (BradNelson), Friday, 25 November 2016 20:07 (seven years ago) link
"I'm trying not to moveIt's just you ghostPassing through"
Pele is my favourite album by miles (FTCGH second)
― Ross, Friday, 25 November 2016 20:22 (seven years ago) link
*sorry should say your ghost, copied that lyric absent mindedly from a website. :-/
this is just kinda baseless speculation but it's possible the lyric "this little masochist / is lifting up her dress" had a considerable effect on my sexuality
― who is extremely unqualified to review this pop album (BradNelson), Friday, 25 November 2016 20:28 (seven years ago) link
angry snatch for ever. Also Tori's Eagles lift on the opening couplet of that song really is very witty.
Not from Pele but I was thinking about this line from "Honey" yesterday: "And you know what you're doing / So don't even" - I can't even remember whether dropping the verb like that was common parlance back in c. 1994? It feels very much this decade.
― Tim F, Friday, 25 November 2016 21:05 (seven years ago) link
She's a really difficult artist to vote for in the polls too, I mean "Black Dove" and "Marianne" both got zero votes - which is insane.
― Ross, Friday, 25 November 2016 22:12 (seven years ago) link
"Black Dove" feels a bit forced to me, like she wanted to write something with the immensity of scale and emotional heft of "Little Earthquakes" or "Upside Down" or "Pretty Good Year", but she doesn't really have a central narrative conceit or ~state~ to work with, so she blows up and over-invests in these component parts which individually are pretty great but ultimately add up to something like a "Past The Mission Pt. 2".
"Marianne", OTOH, is impeccable, perhaps the best example of Tori using her word salad lyricism to extract more impact from the narrative rather than less.
― Tim F, Friday, 25 November 2016 22:58 (seven years ago) link
Wow I typed so far up my ass in this thread over the years my apologies to everyone
― fgti, Friday, 25 November 2016 23:13 (seven years ago) link
My favourite Pele lyric is "and last time I knew / she worked in an abbey in Iona / she said, "I / killed a man, T, I gotta stay / hidden in this abbey""
― fgti, Friday, 25 November 2016 23:14 (seven years ago) link
fgti! That's one of my favourite Tori lyrics :) nice one. "Twinkle" is my #1 song by her.
― Ross, Friday, 25 November 2016 23:49 (seven years ago) link
HI DERE
― Y Kant Jamie Reid (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 26 November 2016 03:43 (seven years ago) link
Hey what does a Brad think about "Sugar" and its jack antonoff from the womb production job?
― Tim F, Friday, November 25, 2016 4:29 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
I'm always surprised by how quiet the production of the original is, like she's singing along to a memory of a beat. The first version of "Sugar" I heard was the live solo piano version on the "Hey Jupiter" single and it surprised me that the original was so calm. (Best version is probably the full band live performance though - weirdly the Proper Rock Star vibe of that tour is such an anomaly in Tori's career but I think a lot of her songs peaked with these arrangements.)
I always forget how good "Black Dove" is because so much of its heft comes from the arrangement (esp the decision to delay the full band for half the song - and there's really no warning that it's coming, I still remember the huge surprise the first time I heard it) and also the middle eight. But I always thought of it as a sequel to "Girl" thematically.
― lex pretend, Monday, 28 November 2016 10:44 (seven years ago) link
I spent the last few days binging and - this will probably change again in future but - I mostly clicked hardest with anything that really spotlighted the interplay between Tori's voice and her piano playing.
I think that specific quality is one that doesn't get talked about much... Her piano playing is less remarkable considered in isolation than understood as this remarkable backdrop to her songs, the sense that these figure-eights she draws around the vocal melodies really accent the songs' emotional content, facial expressions you don't see but hear. It's really unusual for the pop song form, I think, the extent of chromatic density which is essentially there to closely complement the core melodic/narrative/thematic structure.
Take a song like "Doughnut Song": the way the piano rolls through the song like storm clouds, countervailing waves of light and darkness, the way she uses the lower register to really punctuate and emphasise the heavier moments ("and if I'm wasting all your time this time..." and then the left hand really digs in) and then the higher register to suggest wandering and tentativeness that leads off her questioning conclusions ("I guess I'm way beyond the pale....?") - this is one of several ways in which "Doughnut Song" is a sequel to "Honey", which has that same sense of storm clouds rolling in, and is similarly built around very delicate piano/guitar interplay.
Or on "Upside Down", the way the piano follows along with the middle-eight vocal ("I say 'the world is sick' / You say 'tell me what that makes us darlin'" etc.) but fills in all the bits in between the song's dialogues, like the notes are registering the impact, a bruise forming on the skin of the vocal lines.
Or on "Sister Janet", the way the central figure through the verses is played with increasing intensity, until she follows up "slipping the blade in easy" with "slipping the blade in the marmalade", and a sense of lightness suddenly enters with these higher notes, that leads directly into the chorus's reframing of the central riff as somehow optimistic and widescreen rather than claustrophobic and shadowed. And then she jumps up the register for the first half of the second verse to simultaneously suggest a ratcheting of intensity and an increased sense of vulnerability, a turning of the screw with ambiguous consequences.
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.
* Not that this is a bad thing at all, and some days that aspect of FTCH (is part of what) makes it seem to me like her best album, but from a particular vantage point one could almost argue that simply blowing up your sonic palette is maybe the less radical gesture; the harder manoeuvre is to work out how to do anything with the one you've already got.
― Tim F, Monday, 28 November 2016 11:56 (seven years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wVOpTTV5ds
Tori Amos will always be classic to me
― Carlotta's Portrait (Ross), Saturday, 4 March 2017 07:48 (seven years ago) link
wow i missed that booming tim post
― the raindrops and drop tops of lived, earned experience (BradNelson), Saturday, 4 March 2017 09:17 (seven years ago) link
and the pay-off when the crawling baseline and percussion come in is just massive.
you gotta owe! something sometimes!
― the raindrops and drop tops of lived, earned experience (BradNelson), Saturday, 4 March 2017 09:20 (seven years ago) link
Great post Tim
― Carlotta's Portrait (Ross), Saturday, 4 March 2017 20:53 (seven years ago) link
http://pitchfork.com/news/73081-tori-amos-announces-new-album-native-invader-announces-tour/?mbid=homepage-more-latest-and-video
― Carlotta's Portrait (Ross), Monday, 24 April 2017 16:00 (six years ago) link
http://pitchfork.com/news/pitchfork-announces-talk-with-tori-amos/
i would go if i was in NY :-/
― Paisley Window Pane (Ross), Tuesday, 18 July 2017 17:53 (six years ago) link
New single is out.
http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2017/07/27/539523176/listen-tori-amos-shares-cloud-riders-from-upcoming-album
― mthrn, Thursday, 27 July 2017 14:43 (six years ago) link
Not bad? More excited for her shows than any new material, but this is better than expected
― Week of Wonders (Ross), Thursday, 27 July 2017 15:09 (six years ago) link
lmao "native invader"
― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Thursday, 27 July 2017 15:18 (six years ago) link
This thread makes me happy.
― Tim F, Friday, 28 July 2017 14:28 (six years ago) link
is she pretending to be an indian again this time? because I like scarlet's walk but kind of hate that shit
― akm, Friday, 28 July 2017 16:12 (six years ago) link
Watched a recentish performance of hers and was elated when she played "Putting The Damage On"
― Week of Wonders (Ross), Friday, 28 July 2017 18:18 (six years ago) link
anyone catching her on this tour? one of the best live acts in existence
― Week of Wonders (Ross), Sunday, 13 August 2017 21:40 (six years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsSBNNjhGJY
holy shit this song rules
― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Friday, 25 August 2017 17:25 (six years ago) link
I didn't like Cloud Riders or Up the Creek much (the first one IMO being boring and the second a cool yet not fully realised idea), but yes, Reindeer King is gorgeous. Love every second of it.
I don't know WTF is up with the iMovie lyric videos, though.
― mthrn, Saturday, 26 August 2017 23:06 (six years ago) link
this is so good
― Week of Wonders (Ross), Sunday, 27 August 2017 05:56 (six years ago) link
Good to hear her wax about Y Kant Tori Read
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAenlXjCVLE
― Week of Wonders (Ross), Friday, 1 September 2017 03:51 (six years ago) link
Nylon interview is also really good. Tori is such an eloquent speaker and totally genuine and empathetic. Legend
― Week of Wonders (Ross), Friday, 1 September 2017 04:03 (six years ago) link
because I do not value my time I threw a couple clicks into the buzzfeed tithe, and immediately regretted it:
http://i.imgur.com/ZjEkkVb.png
(the worst thing? this is sponsored content by Tori's own team. also, American Doll Posse was a much better "which one is you?")
― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Friday, 1 September 2017 15:56 (six years ago) link
^ I got Raspberry Swirl :-/
― Week of Wonders (Ross), Friday, 1 September 2017 17:21 (six years ago) link
I'm sure anyone that has wanted to hear Y Kant Tori Read has heard it by now?? but I just found out it is up on Spotify in a Remastered version.
Maybe you want to listen to it?
https://open.spotify.com/album/5pnAHJIW4UWmdlFnjyN0IT
― brontosaur, Tuesday, 5 September 2017 21:10 (six years ago) link
Still so great.
― glenn mcdonald, Wednesday, 6 September 2017 13:28 (six years ago) link
new album's out - just started listening, first track is "raindeer king" and yeah it's an instant classic
― she carries a torch. two torches, actually (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Friday, 8 September 2017 23:10 (six years ago) link
second song a little middlingthird track, "broken arrow," super great
― she carries a torch. two torches, actually (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Friday, 8 September 2017 23:21 (six years ago) link
oh thanks for the reminder, definitely want to hear this. not keen on her daughter's vocals tbh
― Week of Wonders (Ross), Saturday, 9 September 2017 20:27 (six years ago) link
in a recent interview Tori made a reference to how she wasn't acknowledged by an artist she admired for many years. Couldn't help but wonder if it was Kate Bush
― Week of Wonders (Ross), Saturday, 9 September 2017 20:51 (six years ago) link
I think her fans established that it was either Stevie Nicks or Joni Mitchell.
― ˈʌglɪɪst preɪ, Saturday, 9 September 2017 21:03 (six years ago) link
oh cool, thanks!
― Week of Wonders (Ross), Saturday, 9 September 2017 21:07 (six years ago) link
i believe I saw Bush say something complimentary about Amos around the last time she bothered to do any kind of press at all. maybe not.
― akm, Sunday, 10 September 2017 19:45 (six years ago) link
i like this better than the last one, it's way too long and my attention drifts occasionally but, like, "reindeer king," "broken arrow," "cloud riders," and "up the creek" are all really wonderful songs
― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Wednesday, 13 September 2017 15:22 (six years ago) link
oh also, "bang"! "bang" is like my favorite tori song in years
― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Wednesday, 13 September 2017 15:42 (six years ago) link
This album is like if, after the 90s (or maybe Strange Little Girls / Scarlet's Walk) Tori had started transitioning to a "mature artist" instead of spending a decade messing with her formula.
I haven't come to grips with most of it yet but stylistically it's on point.
― Tim F, Thursday, 14 September 2017 10:53 (six years ago) link
Reindeer King is so lovely, absolute classic.
― akm, Thursday, 14 September 2017 12:45 (six years ago) link
This album is like if, after the 90s (or maybe Strange Little Girls / Scarlet's Walk)
it's def got a "long-delayed follow-up to scarlet's walk" aspect about it, though that may be me projecting bc "mary's eyes" is my fav tori closer since "gold dust"
― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Thursday, 14 September 2017 13:42 (six years ago) link
feel like "reindeer king" is Tori's bid at 50 ft of snow KB
― Week of Wonders (Ross), Friday, 15 September 2017 04:54 (six years ago) link
"reindeer king" is classic Tori
― Week of Wonders (Ross), Sunday, 8 October 2017 03:07 (six years ago) link
might sound cheesy but I started playing piano as a teenager because of Tori
― Week of Wonders (Ross), Sunday, 8 October 2017 03:09 (six years ago) link