review: The Beekeeper, Tori Amos

[helenic]

Way back in February or thereabouts, casby gave me Tori’s new (at the time) album, The Beekeeper. We watched the DVD interview and agreed that the album as a whole seemed rather forgettable and disappointing, but might well improve on further listens, and I took it away with me. I started writing song notes with the aim of eventually posting a review of some kind, and never quite got round to it (although my lj layout, which borrows from the album notes, hasn’t changed since). I stumbled across what I'd written tonight, while looking for something else, and in the true spirit of essay deadlines I ended up re-listening to the album and writing the rest of it. I haven’t read any other reviews on the album and most of this isn’t saying anything clever, but I remember when new Tori albums were exciting to half my friends list, so I thought you never know, it might be worth posting.



As a holistic, multimedia piece of artwork, this is a very aesthetically pleasing album. The inlay design is gorgeous, particularly the foliage imagery, the honeycomb pattern of the lyrics, and the (apparently symbolic, but meaningless on closer inspection) division of the tracks, in keeping with the hexagonal theme, into six sections. These have little or nothing to do with the track order, and I've taken the songs in thematic (rather than chronological) order, as it were. It also makes consulting the lyrics a bit of a puzzle, but a pleasing one. It’s a trick she’s pulled before but it’s a nice one. I haven’t commented on every song; the ones I’ve missed are, as a rule, the dull ones, with little pace or redeeming noticable features. They’re mostly pretty, but in a background music sort of way, hard to concentrate on. It could be that I’ve missed a gorgeous piece of music simply by allowing myself to get distracted, in which case by all means draw my attention to it, but that said, getting distracted is not an experience I’m used to when listening to Tori.

desert garden

Barons of Suburbia - this sounds familiar, very like one of the songs on Scarlet's Walk, but I can't think which one. So maybe I'm imagining it and I've just misjudged how many times I've listened to it. The best bit of this is her accent cracking on the word "miscalculation" and it coming out with a big Yorkshire "eeehshun" in the middle. I'm not sure why that should be the result of her living in Cornwall, but it still amuses me. This is actually a quality song. Strong bassline, strong piano, rhythmic, and it flows right - backwards and forwards between the melody before heading out into the forcefully soaring and dipping tail: "She is risen, she is risen boys, I said she, is, risen."

General Joy - another strong bassy one (you can tell I like my Tori with funk basslines). Interesting musically, the bridge makes a lot of sense, although it goes a bit dull after the second repetition, and ends nowhere in particular. However, she's writing about the war again. And she isn't very good at it. "General Joy, it seems you need a soldier girl". If you're going to be political, be political powerfully, and if you're going to be Woman, be woman powerfully. Otherwise, don't bother.

rock garden

Witness - the opening is so Cornflake Girl; "Thought I had a cor- oh no wait, wrong song." Not much shape though, and doesn't really go anywhere. At first I liked the rhythmic descending choral pieces, but that's mainly because they're the only bits of the song that have any rhythm. Besides, the whole "daddy was a preacher and it fucked me in the head" theme got a bit old several albums ago, and if you're going to musically borrow a gospel sound you can make it sound so, so much more spectacular than this. In addition to which the lyrics appear to be meaningless, particularly the drugs references ("So then when did you then begin your craving for white powder, exotic matter?"), particularly in comparison to some of the genius on Choirgirl Hotel. Although I did like "words are like guns, when you shoot the moon", and the end redeems it a little, when it steps back, slows down, relaxes into just Tori, her voice, her piano, the bass and the lightest beat and that's all, without any of the faux-pop backing. And then it really does sound like it could have been on Choirgirl.

The Beekeeper - a slow, deep track with an electronic edge. Rather gorgeous, the kind of track you can imagine growling dreamily in the background at a dark underground club while closed-eyed girls dance sinuously to the drum beat. Apart from in the middle section, when everything slips up two octaves, the beat disappears and the whole sound wavers into a fuzzy, acoustic pop-rock nothing, and it loses all its power; not even the lifted seventh at the end of “on my way…” saves it. It doesn’t quite undermine the gravelly, mystical wonder of the rest of the song, but it does destroy the pace and stop it ever really going anywhere.

roses and thorns

Sleeps With Butterflies - a sweet little dreamy song, but again, lacking pace and build and direction. It still hasn't really caught my attention yet. The lyrics are exceptionally dull - a few buzzwords thrown in, "rivers", "on the tail of a kite", "pins and needles", "balloons", "carousel" - the usual. And lines as disappointingly inane as "I'm not like the girls that you've known, but I believe I'm worth coming home to." Come on, you can do better than this.

Jamaica Inn - The first line reminds me of Silent All These Years, "In blue jeans of his with her name still on it," but reading the words I think that's just me, because it's nothing like it. It's the same theme - Tori asking his new girlfriend, who reminds him of Tori when she was younger, if she'll mend Tori's jeans that he ripped. I like this song because it has pirates in it. And the exquisite lyric "between Rebecca's - beneath your firmaments." Musically, however, it's nothing special.

the greenhouse

Parasol - very reminiscent of Crucify in pace and mood, the opening especially. Only it never grows as powerful as Crucify; it lacks that strong beat, the base, her soaring voice. All the sound that makes it Tori is dimmed and fuzzied by the pop drumbeat and the other instruments. Her voice isn't the focus any more, and neither's the piano. A very catchy song; the opening is especially compelling, although it took me a few hearings for it to really settle in my skull, but now it's there, I'm hooked. It's a pity the words don't mean anything, or if they do, nothing more than “I’m the picturesque, serene, empty-headed woman I always envied – which means I’m strong inside! Right?” No, not really.

The Power of Orange Knickers - she played this on the DVD, just her and the piano, and I thought "wow, stunning song". A sort of Wild Horses improvised almost a capella romp, sweet and rambling. Unfortunately on the album it suffers the same treatment as all the rest - with that soulless, cruiseliner band rock-pop backing sound that permeates so many of the tracks and destroys any sort of focus, until the distinctive Tori-ness of it that was so clear in her live rendition is missing completely. It also appears to be about the war on terrorism. Tori love, stick to songs about sex and violence and self-knowledge. Leave the politics to people who can do it. Some very pretty lyrics: "a way out of this - that sacred pipe of red stone could blow me out of this kiss" and some distinctly jarring ones: "those girls that smile kindly then rip you into pieces". If you're going to play the mature-woman card, don't bang in Little Earthquakes lyrics as if you're still in high school. The lyrics get distinctly repetitive towards the end - as is a general feature on this album - and the male backing singer completely disrupts the whole idiosyncratic beauty of her sound.

the orchard

Original Sinsuality – rarely, one for the Tori purists. Voice, piano, words, breath. The lyrics sliding over the notes rather than the other way round, playing games with rhythm and expectation. Bizarrely, as a track it completely escapes you on the first few listens through the album, but if you take it out on its own and just listen to it it's an extraordinary piece of musical mythology. "Yaldaboath Saklas, I'm calling you Samael. You are not alone. I say you are not alone in your darkness. You are not alone." Original sinsuality; bad pun, great song.

Mother Revolution - starts incredibly catchy, like a song you've already heard, sweet and nicely paced and just right, with the lilting voice and the drum and then the bass entering just there. And then, around the minute mark, it just dissolves into nothing, and lost my interest completely. The male backing singer is out of place, and there's no tune as such, just the lilting, pausing entry that had so much potential - repeated over and over again.

elixirs and herbs

Sweet the Sting - nice concept, about pain being beneficial, helping growth, etc. And men who hurt you but are still so very worth it. Again, very reminiscent of another song - Cruel - mainly it's the line "if so then somebody Shake Shake Shake me sane".

Toast - Another just-Tori-and-Bosendorfer, but slow. The Tori I love is her and her piano, getting powerful, rocking, feeling, bringing in the beat and the rising chords like the swell of the sea, like the most natural thing ever. And there’s none of that here. Some of the lyrics are simply lovely, and capture a certain kind of Englishness which feels genuine rather than that of a tourist gaze; “I thought it was harvest time, you always loved the smell of the wood burning. She with her honey hair, Dalhousie Castle - she would meet you there, in the winter. Butter yellow. The flames you stirred.” Although I confess disappointment that the title refers not to the buttered kind but to raising a glass, which as an ending song seems rather twee. An indulgent salute to – what? “In your honour”, somewhat weakly. This is a very pretty song and it stands out on this album for not being swamped by inane percussion, and the particular flavour of the acoustic guitar is a new move and rather gorgous, but then it ends, just as it was starting to get passionate. As a song, it doesn’t stick in the head. You wouldn’t walk down the street singing it as you did with almost all of Little Earthquakes.

Which is the problem with the whole album, really. It would be a cliché to say there was no soul to it, and perhaps it merely takes several more listens to get inside than most of Tori’s albums (Under the Pink took at least four runs through before I started to get it and I’m still working out parts of Boys for Pele) but I honestly think it’s too gentle. She’s settled. She can write pretty songs, and there are some lovely pieces on this album, but with no fire at all between them; all her love fond and familiar, all her appreciation of beauty serene and spiritual, all her self-understanding calm and content, all her memories accepting, there’s little to give the album real pace. It could be that she's actually outgrown me. But it seems that she’s always relied on her ability to communicate her self through music; her songs really are more of an expression than a construction, and without conflict, at a happy point in the journey, and continuing to reject an approach of calculated emotional invention, she’s lacking the means with which to give her creations spark. If she’s passed the point of using her music to explore her suffering and confusion, she needs a new methodology, or no matter how pretty her thought-worlds are they’ll no longer hold people’s attention.

On the other hand, a lot of these songs have the potential to be powerful - if they were performed live, it's possible she could very easily bring out the strength in them. But that's missing in the studio version, and that it's left to the imagination like that is a real shame.

Comments

[applecatching.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this - I'm going to save it and refer to it again when I *finally* get round to listening to the album (I've only very recently 'got to grips' with 'Scarlet's Walk' - I wanted to get that album straight in my head before heading for Beekeeper).

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Thankyou!

I'm not entirely sure why given I don't know you well, but the album certainly made me think of you. I think you'll enjoy it :)

[the-elyan.livejournal.com]

Thankyou for that - you've encapsulated a lot of why I find myself buying Tori albums mechanically, rather than with any particular passion, these days. I think the last one that really fired me up was Choirgirl Hotel, because it was such a departure ... and that was before I even moved to London, seven and a half years ago...

A friend of mine, who I am going to see this weekend, saw Tori on her last tour, in Manchester, and wasn't especially impressed by the new stuff, or the way she is now playing it - as you rightly said, she seems to be losing the extraordinary voice and approach that made her so treasurable in the first place. And singing about your children is always a bad idea...

The biggest problem I have with Tori's recent albums, oddly enough, is that they're too long. I believe one of the first qualifiers for a good album is whether you can sit down and listen to it at one sitting without getting fidgety, and certainly both Scarlet's Walk and The Beekeeper have failed me in this regard - I don't think I've listened to either straight through above three times...

As you say, the real deal remains her and her piano, best demonstrated on the first two albums, the Little Earthquakes video, and the bootlegs from the first couple of tours (and her Unplugged, purely for her spine-tingling version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow).

[libellum.livejournal.com]

The point about length is a really good one, I think, and hadn't actually occurred to me. But you're right - I haven't listened to anything since Choirgirl all the way through without getting distracted. It's lovely background music and occasionally you bask in a song, but it doesn't keep you hooked, not like the early work.

There are some amazing songs on Scarlet's Walk though. Wednesday is one of my favourites ever. And I saw her on that tour, and she was incendiary. But then, she's always been amazing live - her ability to play two pianos at once like she's fucking the piano stool, and sing, like that, non-stop for two hours ... and the sweet almost innocent stage banter. I'd love to hear some of Beekeeper live. Maybe I should have arranged to catch this tour, but the year has been hectic.

[purplepiano.livejournal.com]

Nice review, I enjoyed reading that. I gradually lost interest in Tori after her third album, as her angst-reduction seemed to have made for less interesting music. But I gave Scarlet's Walk another go recently, which, although far too long, had four or so really good songs, so I was interested how she'd moved on from there.

That penultimate paragraph is interesting, as I'm having similar thoughts about Kate Bush's latest. Whose comfortable, settled life seems to be reflected in the pastoral music which although beautiful as ever, has less in the way of deliberate excitement. But the difference with Kate Bush is that she was driven more by theatre, acting and story-telling than communicating her self. She was never tortured or angry like Tori. Maybe a story-telling thing could be the new methodology?

[libellum.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard Aerial yet (is that what it's called?) although I'd like to. I definitely intend to get hold of a copy. I certainly can't talk with any authority about Kate Bush's style as I don't know her anywhere near as well as I know Tori, but you make a really good point about the storytelling style... It almost seems at times as if that's what she's trying to do with Beekeeper, except then you listen to the lyrics and mean they don't tell a story, they're narratively meaningless, their emotional power is all symbolic and abstract and instinctive.

Suzanne Vega is definitely the paradigm of the storyteller model for me.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link.

I'm not entirely sure why you feel the need to be sarcastic - how was I to know that? I've barely communicated with you in months and I don't really know anything about you. I thought your journal was dead.

[purplepiano.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I almost forgot to ask. I've started writing that Cuckoo and the Owl song from Love's Labour's Lost for you and the_lady_lily. You're an alto or lowish mezzo right? Any more specific preferences for preferred range, or which general area of notes is most comfortable? There won't be anything too extreme.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

My comfortable range when warmed up is E flat below middle C to B flat two octaves above it; in general I'm strongest around the middle octave-and-a-half, say F-F-B. My passagio is usually between the mezzo B flat and D, and the mezzo C-D are quite weak notes, but I have a strong sop voice in the fifth above that.

Does that help?

[purplepiano.livejournal.com]

Very helpful indeed, thank you. plus you also taught me the word passagio *blush* never knew there was a word for that..

[libellum.livejournal.com]

It's a useful word, isn't it? And a much nicer way of describing something quite inconvenient. I first heard it from a friend of mine while on tour, went away and looked it up, and thought "aha! I shall remember that". :)