floatingcity's Full Review: Boys for Pele by Tori Amos
Well, she certainly didn’t sell out. Since “Y Kant Tori Read”, each of Tori Amos’ releases till this album had been considerably less accessible to the mainstream; however, not until this point had she produced a record almost one hundred percent incomprehensible upon first listen… and third listen… and tenth…
Recorded post break-up with her long-time professional and personal partner Eric Rosse, “Boys For Pele” (named after a Hawaiian volcano goddess fed with human male sacrifices) sees Tori taking total control of her music for the first time. The album incorporates a similar mixture of full-band and solo piano recordings as “Under The Pink”, but stretches out over a behemoth 19 tracks (although the track listing shows 18, deeming the opening “Beauty Queen” as part of another song). Structured as a journey into the dark underbelly of womanhood, it sees Tori’s character dealing with and processing a failed relationship, taking in a few patriarchal struggles along the way before finally learning to stand on her own. There are 14 ‘proper’ songs and 5 interludes (supposedly, the 14 songs represent the number of body parts the Egyptian goddess Isis had to collect to rebuild her murdered husband Osiris), and although there’s no specified division, the first nine tracks deal with the break-up fallout while the last nine are the recovery.
Musically, the album incorporates the arrangements of her previous efforts (piano, drums, bass, vocals), adding in the occasional gothic church bell, clavichord, brass band and harpsichord, which combine to lend the record a very medieval, baroque flavour. Tori’s skills on the new keyboard instruments are impressive (if not as proficient as the piano), and it allows for a little diversity – although her compositions still have a tendency to lack memorable hooks. That’s a significant issue, but the lyrics prove to be the big kick in really enjoying this album. In places, they’re as smart and challenging as ever (such as in the postulation of a female Messiah in “Muhammad My Friend” and tragic reflection “Putting the Damage On”), but far more often, you get the sense that Tori opened a dictionary and randomly picked out words before smiling and thinking ‘wow, this will make people think I’m poetic!’ I’m all for a bit of abstract and complex storytelling, but the likes of “Tuna, rubber/A little blubber in my igloo” “I got Big Bird on the fishing line/A bit of a shout a bit of an angry snout/He’s my favourite hooker of the whole bunch” and “Off with Superfly sniffing a sharpie pen/Honey it’s Bill and Ben” induce eye-rolling. There’s intelligent metaphor, and then there’s verbal diarrhoea. Guess which category I think those lyrics fall under?
With nineteen songs here, doing a track-by-track exploration is tough, so I’ll try and group things by style to give an overview.
Firstly, there are the interludes. “Beauty Queen” is a two-minute a-capella meditation tacked on to opening track “Horses”, it’s completely forgettable and actually serves to irritate as you have to skip past it every time you want to listen to the superior song that follows. “Agent Orange” combines a simple, happy-ish piano line with Tori lyrically rambling and evidencing a few annoying vocal tics (she sings in a silly ‘affected’ tone on a lot of these songs); once again, it’s a big nothing. “Twinkle” closes the album; it’s a three-minute piece with Tori singing over four piano notes played again and again and again. It too is a waste of space. “Way Down” is better, with a pleasant and somewhat memorable gospel choir, but the best of this section is “Mr Zebra”, which is simple, fun and jaunty, combining a fun piano line with some nice brass touches.
Onto the solo piano songs. Five of these are eerie, spooky and heavily classically influenced; top-notch pieces that stand among Tori’s stronger compositions. “Horses” is a fluid, thoughtful opener while “Father Lucifer” stands as a centrepiece for the album’s ‘exploring the dark side’ theme. Here, Tori takes a cup of tea with the devil and there’s a marvellous, jaunty piano phrase coupled with some pleasant bass flares on the chorus and impressive vocal overdubs in the middle eight. “Marianne” is a tragic tale of a friend’s suicide with half good and half questionable lyrics, but the odd clanger is made up for by the cold yet engrossing, sweeping orchestration courtesy of the Sinfonia of London. Meanwhile, “Muhammad My Friend” points to Tori’s future work exploring the roots of religion with a fine piano improv and classy soprano saxophone piece, and “Putting The Damage On” is a tale of a woman who loves the wrong man too much, made affecting by its quietly noble brass pieces. The other solo piano tracks are “Hey Jupiter”, “Not The Red Baron” and “Doughnut Song”; they’re all pretty forgettable, although “Doughnut Song” has a cool bit of guitar present and “Hey Jupiter” was later remixed into a classy electronic breeze dubbed “The Dakota Version”.
Finally, there are the full-band pieces. Worst first: “Little Amsterdam” is an overlong dirge, its dull monotonous piano line coupled by listless jazz-style beats, the irritating sound effect of a detuned radio, and Tori singing in a stupid ‘tough grrrrl’ accent that sounds ludicrous. “Blood Roses” is a harsh and oblique harpsichord song that alludes to female genital mutilation with quaking lines about “chickens get[ting] a taste of your meat”; despite it being like aural wrist-cutting, it’s kind of interesting until Tori starts pointlessly shrieking “come one, come on, COME ON!” at the end. I guess she’s supposed to sound impassioned and full of rage, but it just sounds like she listened to a few early PJ Harvey albums and decided that whining and moaning was ‘hardcore’ and ‘emotionally real’. Needless to say, it isn’t. Similarly, “Professional Widow” is a pure migraine inducer with more whiny-girl-yelling, it’s emotionally barren and devoid of anything resembling a tune, saved only marginally by the fact that it may be about Courtney Love. Thankfully, the tribal “Caught A Lite Sneeze”, bass-driven “Talula” and jazz-inflected “In The Springtime of His Voodoo” are much better: there’s the occasional dim moment (the first minute of “Springtime” with Tori whinging again), but the harpsichords are integrated well, the piano is refreshing and thoughtful, and there are some nice memorable sections.
Altogether, “Boys For Pele” is a lot like the failed relationship it was inspired by. Initially, it’s an awful mess, but as time goes by you start to recall some great things, perhaps go back because of these and get stung again, before ultimately realising that you have to take the good and the bad together. There are some genuinely fascinating moments on this record and it interested me far more than most of “Under The Pink”, but the hit/miss ratio is far too high for anyone uninitiated with Tori to spend their time on this. An interesting record in places, but proceed with extreme caution.
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