Tori: the big 3

marianne just came on... oomph

i can't go with little earthquakes. i just can't.

and boys for pele is hard to beat even tho under the pink has been dubbed my favorite.

the vocals on Little Amsterdam are hotness

I still REALLY like 'Little Earthquakes' whats the damage with it?

choirgirl is the best one though!

found my dad's cassette w/ the first 2 on it a couple years back and drove aroud listening to that a lot for a while. I voted Under The Pink, although I should probably hear the third too.

ugh under the pink is almost perfect

huh i'm sure i posted in this thread this afternoon. pele easy for me - it was my first tori album, which may inform my view that her creative pinnacle was '96-'99, the pele thru venus years. she went so, so far out there. 'yes anastasia' is still one of the most incredible things she's done though.

as i've said before, tis my favorite tori song :)

also i feel kind of ridiculous and old complaining that there aren't any female singer/songwriters like tori (and pj, and courtney) around nowadays, who can combine sonic ambition and extreme catharsis w/commercial nous and media manipulation, but it's true. it's all neutered everygirlism or kooky infantilism.

wow, i kind of agree with that

my default favourite tori song was always 'honey'. the one i've been rinsing most recently is her cover of 'landslide' though.

choirgirl is the best one though!

^^^^

craaaaaazeeeeeee!

My opinion on this changes pretty regularly, although from a public voting perspective I feel similarly disinclined to vote for Little Eathquakes - which is not a reflection on how much I like it.

I agree that it really should be the "the big 4".

i voted for Pele but it's about even really.. "horses," "doughnut song," "caught a lite sneeze" "blood roses" "little amsterdam" vs "baker baker" "pretty good year" "cornflake girl" "bells for her" "past the mission"

hm. if "honey" counts, then Pink

choirgirl is the best one though!

^^^^

^^^^

also i feel kind of ridiculous and old complaining that there aren't any female singer/songwriters like tori (and pj, and courtney) around nowadays

I really do like Cat Power, but.. it does seem like I don't find anything like their albums from the nineties, and don't know if it's just that I happened to hear them at that time. still like PJ but her last album depressed the hell out of me, it was so grim (meaning sad, not meaning badly made)

"Past The Mission" and "Cornflake Girl" are pretty much all I need, and they stay mysterious and new and weird and unsolvable, in a literary way, after all these years (in the same way that Hounds of Love does).

it must be said: true tori fans know that it's the big 3, not the big 4. while choirgirl is good, even very good, it can't touch these. nope.

there, attack away.

scratch that -- it's a downright AWESOME album, and it still can't touch the big 3.

choirgirl is my favourite too! then pele.

and then VENUS. yeah i said it. venus > pink > earthquakes.

i can't wrap my mind around how someone could prefer choirgirl over pele or pink. i cannot.

those 2 are clearly the pinnacle of her career.

i don't know if i always prefer it to pele, they're about equal, but choirgirl is just overflowing with ideas and experiments, and she pulls them all off - it feels almost decadently creative

i'm gonna put it on :)

i mean, in the context of her career at the time, where on earth did something like 'liquid diamonds' or 'hotel' spring from? let alone the way she actually pulls off a big dumb dance banger like 'raspberry swirl'.

plus 'playboy mommy' might be the most accomplished example of tori's songcraft, over the years

oh and 'iieee' remains unlike any other music anyone has ever done.

plus i think choirgirl probably has tori's most evocative, poetic use of language.

I agree that Choirgirl is in a different class but that's mostly because these three albums have a really strong association for me. Along with Bjork's Post, they were the soundtrack to probably the most traumatic period of my adolescence. I had two older friends/neighbors (they were brothers) who were big into Bjork, Tori, NIN, Beck, etc. When I was 13 they both died in separate accidents within 3 weeks of each other. Their sister and I grew to be quite close and became obsessed with their music collection. By the time Boys for Pele came out in 1996, I was completely gay for Tori. I loved the shit out of that album, though I've cooled a bit on it now. I'd probably rank Choirgirl a bit higher. And though I still love most of it ("Mother" and "Tear in your Hand" especially), Little Earthquakes has too many songs that I like but simply have no desire to listen to anymore ("Crucify", "Silent All These Years"). Under the Pink feels to me like her most solid effort, but really I've probably given these albums something close to equal play time over the years.

which one has "past the mission"? it's that one.

under the pink. i know, i can't vote yet.

i don't know, lex -- if you're going to talk creativity and songwriting, then i'm even more inclined to go with under the pink or boys. they're just crawling with inspiration and ingenuity. while choirgirl seems to color more in the lines, and can sound overwrought.

'overwrought' is what she's good at!

I think Under the Pink is the best of these. Went back and listened to Choirgirl last night and the production holds up very well for the obligatory 1997-1998 'electronica' influenced album.

I'm torn on this issue.

I agree with Lex that the word "songcraft" is kinda crucial w/r/t "Liquid Diamonds" and especially "Playboy Mommy", a song which is perhaps the pinnacle of her career even if it's not yr favourite or her best (it's certainly "one of" in both categories for me). Like, everything on the first four albums builds to the point where she can write, perform and arrange that song the way that she does. The casual power of it is kinda awe-inspiring; who the fuck else in the world could just channel something like that? It's totally on another level.

But Surmounter describing the album as a whole as "overwrought" is the kind of accusation that upsets me because I'm afraid he's right, and the next time I listen to it that's what I'll hear. Almost everything feels highlighted with pink texta on that album, whereas ultimately it's the emotional inscrutability of Pele and Pink that is U&K - it's not that they're less accessible or more convoluted, but that their power mostly doesn't stem from typical power-expressions (people describing Pele as emotionally direct are kind of off-base here, though explaining why is a whole thread in itself). Ugh I'm being inarticulate here. How about: a song like "Cloud On My Tongue" tears me up but crucially I don't know why whereas I know exactly what "Raspberry Swirl" and "Northern Lad" are trying to do to me. They're successful, don'tgetmewrong, but their gestures are still closer to postures.

Choirgirl paved the way for the ultimate development of a "see through" effect with Tori's later music - as in, even her fans begin to feel like they can "see through" what she's doing. You then have to consciously will yourself to submit. This is why albums like Scarlet's Walk and American Doll Posse are maybe easier to like but ultimately harder to love than her earlier albums.

I like when Glenn McDonald writes the following of the latter album:

"Every new album I start off thinking that she's finally resorted to faking her private-language evasiveness in some cheap form hasn't really had its rules worked out, and then something clicks and I realize for the eighty-fourth time that it's still our same half-assed, heart-wounded, spirit-lost language she's speaking, and it's painfully telling that when you pour enough truths into it it invariably begins sounding like code. But this is how we break its bad rules to find out how to say what we most desperately need to understand."

He's obviously decided that it's brilliant, but that initial process of doubt, that suspicion that this is actually a cynical simulacra of Tori rather than the definite product, is I think a reflection of a shift in the way that she approaches songwriting that has its germination in Choirgirl.

while choirgirl seems to color more in the lines, and can sound overwrought

of the good bit of tori's career i think the first half of pink is about as close as she's got to colouring inside the lines - it all sticks to the traditional female singer-songwriter aesthetic, you know? sonically and thematically. you can feel her start pushing out of that towards the end of the album, and i think the minimal blasts of pele (almost galás-like in its extremity) and the electronic focus of choirgirl and venus really continue that.

(people describing Pele as emotionally direct are kind of off-base here, though explaining why is a whole thread in itself)

haha yeah. emotionally intense, yeah, but the intensity comes entirely from her lack of emotional direction (apart from maybe 'hey jupiter').

a song like "Cloud On My Tongue" tears me up but crucially I don't know why whereas I know exactly what "Raspberry Swirl" and "Northern Lad" are trying to do to me

but then you could easily switch that around - 'baker baker' and 'god', for example, are just as deliberate and transparent as 'northern lad' (which is almost mariah-esque in its shamelessness), while 10 years on i still have no idea what 'hotel' and 'iieee' are even trying to be, and can barely work out why they're so powerful. overall i think choirgirl comes off as more inscrutable precisely because it's peppered with these perfectly honed examples of songcraft, the arrangements are all so detailed and emphatic, there are so many angles to look at the songs from that you can get lost in the sheer richness of it all.

also "electronic focus" really does the production on choirgirl and venus a disservice, it makes it sound like obligatory tori-goes-trip-hop casio loops, but the sonic ambition of those albums' most out-there moments is still pretty astounding. like, 'hotel' and 'datura' wtf?!

I don't disagree with any of that last paragraph, except that I think the directness of "God" or "Baker Baker" is actually a misdirection, as if the action was happening somewhere else. Hard to explain this feeling. But I think the more Tori sounds typical on Pink the less typical she actually becomes - try to think of another song from anyone else that actually does what those two songs do... (neither of them are absolute favourites of mine actually but I'll stick up for them to this extent).

Ultimately I don't think anything on Under The Pink is direct (or rather, means its directness) except, ironically, "Bells For Her".

Whereas on Choirgirl there's a direct correlation between the avant-ness of the song-as-song and the avant-ness of the song-as-sound - "Hotel" being the furthest-out the album gets on both scales.

This is of course perfectly fair enough as a musical strategy, but it's a strategy that makes sense when abstracted away from Tori's personal qualities as a musician - so that if you were looking for the starting point for a complication in Tori's capacity to reproduce herself as an artist, I think it's here.

These aren't really criticisms per se: I think a massive part of the power of Choirgirl is how it just goes for those universal jugular moments, the way Tori sets up a cliche (in relative terms) and nails it, one after the other after the other (e.g. "Northern Lad" is one of her top tier songs and performances).

"That last paragraph" being from Lex's second to last post.

of the good bit of tori's career i think the first half of pink is about as close as she's got to colouring inside the lines - it all sticks to the traditional female singer-songwriter aesthetic, you know?

i understand, but i think the instrumentation on the album is more traditional then the songwriting. the remarkable vocals in the chorus of God are just a small example. Not to mention Yes, Anastasia, which can get by on its classical piano tangents alone. Also, even if the arrangements are somewhat traditional, they feel genuine enough, and romantic enough, to get away with it.

IMHO

I think the directness of "God" or "Baker Baker" is actually a misdirection, as if the action was happening somewhere else. Hard to explain this feeling. But I think the more Tori sounds typical on Pink the less typical she actually becomes - try to think of another song from anyone else that actually does what those two songs do... (neither of them are absolute favourites of mine actually but I'll stick up for them to this extent).

i've always felt this way

the way she makes God so poppy is completely circumventive, which is why it kicks ass.

whadoyaknow
whadoyaknow
i got to find -- find -- fiiind
where you always go
when the wind blows

Compare "Baker Baker" with "Your Cloud", which I think is both a similar song and an excellent song, but one that I think works on many levels that I wouldn't exclusively associate with the artist. Check the following lyrics from that song:

where the river cross
crosses the lake
where the words
jump off my pen
and into your pages
do you think
just like that
you can divide
this you as yours
me as mine to
before we were us
if the rain has to separate
from itself
does it say "pick out your cloud?"
pick out your cloud
if there is
a horizontal line
that runs from the map
off your body
straight through the land
shooting up
right through my heart
will this horizontal line
when asked
know how to find
where you end
where i begin
"pick out your cloud"

Now I think this works really well in the song, but/because there's a desire at work I think for the song to communicate something sensible (in the sense of being able to be experienced in a manner that feels rational) to the listener.

Compare "Baker Baker":

Baker Baker
Baking a cake
Make me a day
Make me whole again
And I wonder
What's in a day
What's in you cake this time

I guess you heard
He's gone to LA
He says that beihnd my eyes I'm hiding
And he tells me I pushed him away
That my hearts been hard to find

Here there must be something
Here there must be something here here

Baker Baker can you explain
If truly his heart
Was made of icing
And I wonder
How mine could taste
Maybe we could change his mind

I know you're late
For you next parade
You came to make sure
That I'm not running
Well I ran from hime
In all kinds of ways
Guess it was his turn this time

Time thought I'd made friends with time
Thought we'd be flying
Maybe not this time

Baker Baker
Baking a cake
Make me a day
Make me whole again
And I wonder
If he's ok
If you see him say hi

These are, I think, much worse lyrics on one level - an odd mixture of a pointless metaphor (what does the whole baker/cake scenario actually mean beyond some sub-Forrest Gump notion of life being like a cake?) and then really specific factual references that are too discrete (and discreet) to converge into a sensible picture. But it's that lack of sensibility which I think is key: if you want the Tori's successes on Pink to make sense rationally you're barking up the wrong tree. The lyrics to this song, its weird intermeshing of meaningless universality and meaningless specificity, feel totally evocative in context.

also i feel kind of ridiculous and old complaining that there aren't any female singer/songwriters like tori (and pj, and courtney) around nowadays, who can combine sonic ambition and extreme catharsis w/commercial nous and media manipulation, but it's true. it's all neutered everygirlism or kooky infantilism.

have you given Ashlee Simpson or Miranda Lambert a whirl?

i agree that you have to accept the absurdity of the lyrics in a lot of Under the Pink, and that Choirgirl is more consciously rational. however, i think Your Cloud holds its own, but Baker Baker puts it to shame.

i tried getting through the lyrics to Your Cloud 4 times just now and I couldn't. the words fit, but it's vague and poetic in a way more convenient than meaningful.

As for the lyrics to Baker Baker, though I've oft dismissed lyrics that are too specific, I don't mind it here. It feels necessary for the protagonist to purge certain details about the end of this relationship without going into them. Also, the baker/cake metaphor does make sense to me on another level. The lyrics suggest a character who doesn't understand herself in the context of love. She calls on the baker to invent tricks for her, tricks that at once win people over and drive them away. The baker could represent her continual attempts to mold herself around the men who love her.

btw Playboy Mommy really is something

Yeah I think "Baker Baker" is a much better song than "Your Cloud" Surmounter! That said I think the lyrics to "Your Cloud" are excellent in a more generalised, non-Tori sense - here the metaphors (e.g. the inability to distinguish between a river and a lake it runs through) actually have a direct, illuminating connection to the point of the song (the sense of entanglement that one feels at the end of a relationship, the artificiality of the sudden resurrection of barriers and assertions of individuality/independence). But I don't know if that kind of direct connection is what I want when I listen to Tori's music.

yes

haha i have never paid attention to the lyrics of 'your cloud' before cuz it's just such a boring song, that tinkly gloopy piano line repeated forever.

i think the clichéd pointlessness of the baker/cake metaphor is really what makes its lyrics great - it kind of reinforces the persona of someone who doesn't understand her emotions, who pushes people away, and of course that kind of person would fall back on a meaningless cliché as a starting point (and the beauty of the song is that this swiftly and inevitably proves insufficient, and the narrator is sort of forced into directness - "my heart's been hard to find" must be about the most straightforward line tori's ever written).

I really do like Cat Power, but.. it does seem like I don't find anything like their albums from the nineties, and don't know if it's just that I happened to hear them at that time.

yeah ditto - i always wonder, what kind of music would i like if i was a teenager now? i like cat power a lot of the time but tbh she has never, ever given any indication that she has the skillz - technical chops, ambition, songwriting talent - to go where tori or pj went at their best.

i know what you mean Tim. the 1st few times i heard Baker Baker, I had no idea wtf she was talking about and it did sound self-consciously poetic.

but i also remember being startled by the beauty of the composition and delivery.

Yeah totally. What I'm trying to do is chart why "Baker Baker" is better than it might appear to be if you apply typical notions of lyrical complexity, sonic experimentalism, songcraft daring etc.

in a way it's Yes Anastasia vs. Marianne, innit

^^ oh the gaimanity

What I'm trying to do is chart why "Baker Baker" is better than it might appear to be if you apply typical notions of lyrical complexity, sonic experimentalism, songcraft daring etc.

http://img55.imageshack.us/img55/3448/breakfasttheoryzt3.gif

really Geir? i would've thought Earthquakes has more straightforward melodies/tunes to your ears.

Tunes don't have to be straightforward as long as they are tunes. Tori Amos isn't exactly atonal although already from "Little Earthquakes" she has been a bit too melodically repetitive at times. It works for Kate Bush though.

in a way it's Yes Anastasia vs. Marianne, innit

i think the most impressive song on pele might be 'blood roses'. or maybe 'father lucifer'...

"Father Lucifer" I think, though I didn't think so many years. My absolute favourites for the longest times were "Marianne" and "The Doughnut Song".

blood roses is mindboggling

but then so is putting the damage on and not the red baron.

i fucking love not the red baron.

God just came on. i need to calm down.

& Waitress o_O

the version of 'the waitress' from the venus live cd is astonishing

i can't take yes anastasia right now, the goodness is too real

Kick off Professional Widow and Hey Jupiter and Pele is a perfect album.

But that 9 minute version of Waitress on Venus Live is the worst 9 minutes of music I've ever heard.

if anything needs to be kicked off pele it's 'talula'

Yes, you're right. Talula. Bad song!

i like "hey jupiter"'s pretensions towards being "purple rain"

UtP for me, all the way, by the way

ok talula is awesome

really awesome!

that's like her enlightened hippie woman song. somehow it reminds me of a chico's commercial.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

mmmmhmm. i see.

i do feel for boys for pele though. that's rough.

Don't you think she's phoning it in now tho? Regina Spektor was like Tori Amos-Lite and now Tori 'sounds like that' (as in a tamer version of herself) which is...confusing

you mean now like her newer albums?

i can't really deal. scarlet's walk is good but it sounds like a big live band traveled around the US and got a little arty

the newest thing had some great moments tho ::shrugs::

I know but they weren't as great as they could be yeah? I think she's too rich now/too tired.

yeah. can't pretend the old trix are intact.

tho it is really nice to put Fat Slut on at work

I read;
"It is really nice to put a Fat Slut at work"

What are peeps thoughts on Code Red?

whoa surprised at the results! bad ilx, wrong.

'code red' is one of my favourites off ADP, the density of the arrangement is kind of awe-inspiring, so rich and sultry. great piano riff, and some of her most evocative lyrics in years - love the way she sings the line about jack and coke. "victory is an elusive whore" = lol, though.

yeah. can't pretend the old trix are intact.

basically. she seems to have developed a weird fetishisation of 'classic' songwriting, which paid off here and there on SW but has largely made her music rather dull. felt v positively about ADP, it seems 'right' for where she is now, there's no point in expecting another Pele or Choirgirl and she seems to be taking the whole classic thing into interesting territory. her voice is kind of shot these days though.

"Victory is an elusive whore" would be an awful line by itself but I think the drawn out pay-off of "she's as easily mine as she is yours" almost redeems it entirely.

Yeah that's a very good song.

The best songs on that album are the bonus tracks though - "Smokey Joe" and "Dragon" almost have that same "how the fuck can a human do this" quality that "Playboy Mommy" does.

ok talula is awesome

it has one of the shittiest, most weak-ass beats i've ever heard - amazing how much the BT radio edit improves it. bizarre choice of single, too.

she seems to have developed a weird fetishisation of 'classic' songwriting, which paid off here and there on SW

full, shameful disclosure: Scarlet's Walk is my favorite Tori album.

once again i voted fucking wrong. boys is definitely the best. omg douhnut song

btw stephen you should be ashamed indeed.

not to mention In the springtime of his voodoo.

I listened to Choirgirl again the other day and I take back what I said above about it being better than Boys for Pele.

uh, thanks

Your welcome? :)

You're, even.

:D

"In The Springtime Of His Voodoo" is amazing - another "woah how did she fit so many ideas so successfully into one song, WTF is she channelling" kinda moment. After "Father Lucifer" that's probably my favourite track on the album. It's all good though.

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r305/superflouis/Tori-Amos-Recovering-Christian_373F.jpg

"Father Lucifer" is still one of the most gorgeous things I have ever heard. The ending is unfuckwithable.

And yes, I agree that it should be "the top 4".

(P.S. Tim Finney, you have (gay & drunk) fans in El Salvador.)