honey bring it close to my POLL yeah: Tori Amos - Boys For Pele poll

this album is such an embarrassment of riches.

right now, what i want to hear most is Not The Red Baron. over and over.

I only got into Tori Amos a couple years ago and haven't gotten to this one yet.

this is basically the album that got me obsessed with tori amos, having been a casual fan (a bit too young tbh) previously. i think i may have played it maybe every day in 1996? the opening run "beauty queen" => "hey jupiter" is completely perfect. not a clue what to pick!

anyway i guess there's lots to talk about; this is when she started to move out of the traditional singer-songwriter sonic framework in many ways:

- arrangements stripped down to the point of nakedness (tim f on the last thread: "if you used to paint with a large palette, and then you restrict yourself to just a couple of colours, then your choice of which colours to use will start to seem much more radical")

- a more ahem oblique relationship with song structure and straightforward lyrical meaning

- and in terms of performance bringing those latent diamanda galás tendencies to the fore

- also, wikipedia informs me that "caught a lite sneeze" was one of the first ever singles to be given away as a free download! who knew?

i was youtubing earlier and enjoyed this story/performance of "father lucifer", which is definitely in the top tier of contention here (sadly any live version necessarily omits the completely astonishing triple rounds towards the end of the song):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx0IOe5FKDQ

it's on my list, though I think that what I like in her in the four records I have (little earthquakes, under the pink, choirgirl hotel, & american doll posse) is actually leans traditional singer-songwriter-y stuff - for example my fave on "doll posse" is "bouncing off clouds," which isn't confessional piano & voice but still song-wise is verse/chorus/stunning bridge/chorus - that's what I dig

that's probably my favourite ADP cut too.

i mean, for all that BFP is weird, it's not entirely forbidding; it's just a fairly intense listen because for the most part there's just YOU and HER and nothing to moderate the experience. but it's melodically so rich - her abandonment of traditional verse-chorus structures just means she gets to cram more hooks in, if anything - and while the lyrics are elliptical, let's say, the imagery and delivery are evocative enough that they do seem very specific. much of the time she just seems to be riffing on rhymes and other phonetic connections between words, which a) is sonically really satisfying eg the whole milkwood/silkwood/you would/i would nursery rhyme feel in "horses", b) magnifies the emotional effect when she does slip back into straightforwardness/lucidity to deliver absolutely devastating lines like "if my heart's soaking wet, boy your boots can leave a mess".

the hooks in Marianne are ridiculous. that song changed my life.

Absolute top tier for me:

Father Lucifer
Marianne
Caught A Lite Sneeze
Doughnut Song

i remember the first time i got into doughnut song. i was writing a paper and it sort of crept up on me -- the amount of room in the song, the tinkling beauty of the melody. ace.

this album is such an embarrassment of riches.

Fixed.

"lite sneeze" or "jupiter."

another great thing about this album is that, for all its sparseness on focus on tori-and-her-piano/harpsichord, the use of other instruments is perfectly judged: the church bells tolling in the second verse of "blood roses", ramping up the sense of doomy inevitability; the trumpet providing a mournful, drifting counterpoint to the jaunty chamber music of "father lucifer"; that cheesy sax coming in so unexpectedly on "muhammad my friend" just as she sings "til i get my own, honey, tv show" - the last thing you expect at that juncture of the album is for the music to mimic an actual daytime tv theme tune and yet there it is.

also i love that for all her eccentricity and singularity, she's not above just doing a devastatingly effective "purple rain" rip on "hey jupiter", which may well wind up being my pick.

gotta re-listen. lotta harpsichord goin' on.

Father Lucifer

The thing I'm most struck by, relistening to this, is how much nuance Tori loses when she switches from piano to harpsichord. More than she gains in novelty or Victorian Gothic, I think, especially in retrospect.

lol i just noticed i already did a poll on this album!

Boys For Pele, polllllllllllll

This record is me at age 15 lying on the couch in my girlfriend's basement knowing for certain that every rock I have held to will soon give into the sea.

Probably "Putting the Damage on." Because she did, you see. And I did too.

Though the whole of "Hey Jupiter"'s lyrics are pretty damn devastating, and as lex said, even moreso in lieu of all the "me pureed sanitarily mr sulu warp speed" going on for the rest of this record. I'm particularly undone by the "couldn't choose between the shower or the bath" and the final "no one's picking up the phone," which answers with, "guess it's clear that he's gone / and this little masochist / is lifting up her dress / guess I thought I could never feel the things I feel."

'doughnut song' .. after that it'd be 'caught a lite sneeze' and 'horses'

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I was thinking the other day, I probably haven't listened to a Tori album (aside from "Choirgirl") since '02 or so, but I still remember all the words to 'Talula.'

"Marianne" probably. I haven't listened to this one in a while. I love the "her olives they are cold-pressed/and her best friend is a sundress" couplet in "Little Amsterdam."

Do people prefer the Tornado mix or the original version of "Talula"?

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

huh, odd results. lack of interest doesn't make me feel optimistic about choirgirl/venus polls but i might plow ahead with them in the morning. ilm should really give so much more of a shit about tori amos.

prefer the tornado mix by far, the beat on the original is so clumsy and awkward. such a weird choice of single!

"little amsterdam" is an excellent track, yes. you can virtually hear the steam rise off it.

It could just be that we already did it once and nothing new was really being said this time 'round.

"Caught A Lite Sneeze" deserved a vote (though I didn't vote for it ha) - I think it's a fabulous example of a track that stands up really well as a single without a sacrificing a whit of its intense singularity (or is that singular intensity).

Horses deserved a vote

fwiw i'm happy to see her booked for bonnaroo '10, i've never seen her so this might be my likeliest chance.

She never toured Australia between about Jan 1995 and I think late 2005, since when she has been here I think 3 times (possibly the third is about to happen or just happened?).

There was almost a decade in there during which I would have loved to have seen her, by the time she actually started turning up I had pretty much lost interest in the idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttD0GE23_TM

O_O

For anyone who can watch BBC iplayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00x95j6/Rhyme_and_Reason_Episode_2/ jump to it.

Having my first proper listen to Boys for Pele on Spotify...this first song is really gorgeous fellas.

Forgive me for this one: a more loveable, interesting, melodious Have One On Me.

hahaha

i did say at the time that more newsom reviews should be mentioning tori, and that they didn't is reflective of how unjustly she's been written out of music history by, y'know, straight white dudes who fear her cuz she reminds them of their crazy ex-girlfriends. the context in which those reviews should have mentioned her is "have one on me has nothing on tori", of course

Interesting....so far this is everything I tried to glean and search out from the Newsom album...the first listen impact is quite stunning. I'm also curious about 'being written out of music history' as the rock criterati can fall over themselves to praise music like this. It's surprising..

Okay track four has just started...is this some kind of glitch in Spotify? Poppin' disco house..

Also I have a feeling that Louis won't take to this nearly as naturally as to Kate and her kinship with UK prog and art rock.

ha oh god, boys for pele was reissued w/the house remix of "professional widow" dumped unceremoniously in the middle, i always forget that. it's a great remix that should be presented nowhere near the album

xp. mm tru say re the critics. no mainstream female solo artist to touch her these days i'm afraid, much as i like Newsom, FloMash et al.

basically newsom, florence et al are completely unthreatening - they shy away from catharsis, confrontational subjects like religion and, to put it bluntly, vengeful songs which eviscerate ex-boyfriends

Yeah although Newsom does make these concerted and genuine efforts to engage with difficult topics, there is nothing fierce or moving or unsettling about the execution. It's crafted so that it makes listeners naturally 'impressed', but it can't get under your skin.

It's where the (at times) flippant put-downs of unicorns and renaissance fayres ring true...the music is written in this arch code or something.

The Have One On Me believers praise seems to focus on this idea of 'well-written' songs in the classic rock sense, with twists and turns and interesting, ingratiating melodies, and creative arrangements (I really like the loose drumming and 'classic american pop' feel of the brass on Good Intentions say), so I can't really square this. I have said what I can..

i think it's telling that BFP - easily tori's most "difficult", non-immediate album - seems so melodically rich next to newsom's material - newsom for the most part is completely hook-averse

no votes for muhammad or horses is um, baffling, but then again hardly anybody turned up to vote. there are about 6 or 7 stone cold classics here. it's an album to keep you guessing - alternating between plaintive, spare intimacy and all-out vitriol. but theres something at least vaguely unsettling in all these songs, so the really intense, cathartic moments aren't at all unqualified.

I would say that "Muhummad" and "Talula" are the two points where Tori loses the thread a bit, still good songs but they're both a bit thrown at the wall.

I could easily have voted for any of:

Putting The Damage On
Not The Red Baron
Blood Roses
Father Lucifer
Doughnut Song
Marianne
In The Springtime Of His Voodoo
Caught A Lite Sneeze
Beauty Queen/Horses

yeah, doughnut song is a bit of a dark horse. one of the few songs towards the end of the album that crept up on me.

I think basically I love any song of Tori's with multitracked vocals singing different melodies.

I'd go so far as to say that she's better at that trick than possibly anyone I can think of.

I've played Horses about ten times tonight. When she rachets her voice up in the last minute or so, it just destroys me..

'Multitrack vocals singing different melodies'...Cocteau Twins, hello?

Gah didn't mean that to sound snide...just that have to count CTs into this equation, with Heaven of Las Vegas as prime example.

or

No Cocteau Twins is some different ish because it's soundscaping to begin with.

With Tori it's like, here is this ordinary song in the sense of verse/chorus/bridge etc with recognisable lyrics and a (sorta) story and everything, and then suddenly the song grows tentacles which start to intertwine with one another.

The Beach Boys would actually be a much better point of comparison, but when you break down the constituent parts the Beach Boys' overlapping melodies are much more basic in isolation than Tori's are.

Like, my point is that Tori's harmonising is an extension of her classicism, but an extension that goes right into really unusual territory, rather than an extension of her idiosyncracies.

I don't think the soundscaping factor eliminates the Cocteau Twins at all...Heaven is like this: a bed of atmospheric stuff, with Liz's melodies as the song's true 'content', weaving and harmonising as they do. I reckon you could listen and get pleasure out of I Wear Your Ring (especially the coda) or Fifty-Fifty Clown as pure acapellas.

Agree though about Tori's case as extensions of the basic components of 'classicist' songwriting....a doubling up or multiplication (not in a copying sense, more like duplicating the content of something and laying it over the original in rewarding ways).

I'm not trying to say that Cocteau Twins aren't really good at multitracking vocals, I just think the dynamic is different - even on Heaven or Las Vegas the songwriting is "conventional" only in relative terms (vis a vis Treasure say), if the Liz wrote vocal melodies that didn't include such tricks at all that'd remove like half her melodic craft, it's so central to the appeal.

Whereas with Tori it's always this unexpected gear-shift.

Think of it in terms of Kogan's model of a context of abundance (cocteau twins) vs a free lunch (tori).

Okay, the merging and multi-tracking of vocals as soundscaping in itself, rather than emerging together with the instrumental backing. I get ya.

In an extract from her new book in the 33 1/3 series, Amy Gentry explains why its rejection of the ideals of feminine and musical beauty are crucial to an understanding of Amos’s 1996 album

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/oct/23/tori-amos-boys-for-pele-daring-to-be-ugly-extract?CMP=twt_gu

aw that got me really amped for this book

Boys for Pele is 25 today!

Happy Birthday Boys for Pele! You have aged spectacularly well.

BBC archive just put up a great performance of the winning song;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-kI9ogRh-I

omg