pt-paratroopa's Full Review: The Beekeeper by Tori Amos
Tori Amos is typically not described as an artist who lacks passion. The North Carolina-born singer/songwriter/prodigy pianist/unconventional 90's alternative female rocker struck a chord with listeners with her opening quartet of albums (1991's Little Earthquakes, 1994's Under the Pink, 1996's Boys for Pele and 1998's from the choirgirl hotel for those uneducated). Amos' emotional outpourings about personal topics such as her rape, miscarriage, not fitting in as an adolescent and conflict with religion made her a hero of male and female fans alike. Later albums saw her experimenting with her sound, such as choirgirl and 1999's to venus and back, and her persona, such as 2002's Scarlet's Walk and 2007's American Doll Posse to more notably mixed fan reaction.
Still, the only album near-universally trashed by Amos fanatics would be 2001's covers album, Strange Little Girls. An overlong, somewhat unemotional album with a shocking lack of musical variety, Strange Little Girls was enjoyed by some but seen as nothing more than a contractual obligation to end her partnership with Atlantic to most. However, what's really surprising to me is the number of fans who don't seem to mind 2005's The Beekeeper. Guilty of many of the same problems as Strange Little Girls, The Beekeeper is a disaster that features an overlong setlist, bored singing from Amos, bland compositions and even worse writing due in part to Amos' notable preference for lyrical metaphor and the songs' own lack of charisma.
At eighteen tracks, reviewing (as well as listening to) The Beekeeper is a chore. Since I don't want to put everybody to sleep (an effect this album has had on me many times), the best way to tackle this beast would be splitting the album into highlights and lowlights.
- The Highlights (I Suppose) -
Lead single "Sleeps with Butterflies" is not groundbreaking by any means, especially for an unconventional artist such as Tori, but the song has undeniable charm. It was a good enough single for me to buy the album on the first day it was released, as it was reminiscent of Scarlet's Walk while managing to exude a brighter, prettier sound. And, while the song does veer noticeably close to adult contemporary at times, repeated listenings haven't diminished beauty in the backing music or the lovely sweetness in Tori's vocals. This is one of the few songs on The Beekeeper that has a noticeable hook, not to mention lyrics that actually tell a story: You say the word, you know I will find you / Or if you need some time, I don't mind; I won't hold on to the tail of your kite, she sings to a potential lover. This is easily the best song on the album.
During pre-release interviews for the album, a big deal was made about how Tori was experimenting with her sound and instrumentation. One of the only times you can hear proof for such a claim would be on the second song, "Sweet the Sting." It's a well-performed, laid-back, somewhat tribal track with an aura that makes me think of an outdoor cafe during a sunset. However, even on a decent song such as this one, the reasons why I dislike this album are already evident: "Sweet the Sting" clocks in at 4:16, yet it seems to stretch on and on for much longer, as it never makes a real attempt to grab the listener's attention. The lyrics are similarly characterless, with Tori seemingly contented from repeating Sweet, sweet, sweet the sting / Is it real, this infusion? ad nauseam. But, like "Sleeps with Butterflies," the song is likable overall.
Opening track "Parasol" is another one of those rare tracks featured on The Beekeeper that arrives with an apparent pulse. But, just like with "Sweet the Sting," I can't help but feel like this track is nothing more than merely "decent." I mean, it is a well-sung and well-performed song, and I even understand and appreciate the references to Seurat's painting "Seated Woman with a Parasol." But that's just it: I think the real problem is that Tori just isn't breaking out of that "frame" she says she's found safety within... on this song or almost every other song on this album. This painful fact is particularly illustrated but the backing music of "Parasol": vaguely dark and ominous, and relying mostly on piano and a driving beat, it sounds like a lesser recreation of "Crucify" from the much-superior album Little Earthquakes.
"Barons of Suburbia" is a slightly above average song with lively delivery and some nice piano throughout; it also features a simultaneously interesting and amusing vocal passage, as Tori manages to drag the word risen through several key changes and a fifteen-second(!) delivery time toward the end of the song. Unfortunately, the combination of "nice piano" and "vocal experiments" make the song sound like a weird hybrid of "Carbon" from Scarlet's Walk and any Boys for Pele track. Elsewhere, "Marys of the Sea" serves as an effective, though overlong, showcase for Tori's sweeping vocals and pianos. For these reasons, "Marys" is a highlight on this disc; it could have been a modern Amos classic, but, unfortunately, this version is too repetitive as it stands, cycling through the same movements one too many times.
"General Joy" and "Mother Revolution" are both average, somewhat pretty, somewhat interesting songs that sound downright brilliant to some of the other tripe on this album, and that's about there is on the good side of the coin.
- The Lowlights -
I used to think "Witness" was one of the stronger songs to be found on this album because, after all, Tori actually sounds as if she cares about what she's singing for once! The music also recreates "Sweet the Sting," only with a livelier, funkier sound that works much better. However, upon repeated listens, this song manages to lose all of its initial sheen and actually ends up becoming a hindrance. Because, you see, whoever was left in charge of structuring "Witness" hacked it up and left it in pieces on the cutting room floor; the end result is a six-minute long, mind-numbingly repetitive mess. It's like the song had three parts that the programmer arbitrarily slapped onto the final master of the album: a sample of Tori singing, with a backing choir, "Thought I had a witness, come on, come on, come on!" that was pasted about fifteen times at various and puzzling intervals; a section with a nice display of Tori's vocal range that was unfortunately scrambled up to give us the unintelligible phrase "so then when did you then begin your craving for white powder exotic matter that cells divide arresting time" (yeah, seriously); and the bridge of the song, in which the music was accidentally deleted and replaced with ballad music that sounds entirely out of place.
In other words, "Witness" is an overlong argument for why Frankenstein should not be hired to produce music.
Speaking of bad experiments, do I really need to get into the trainwreck known as "Hoochie Woman"? The words "Tori Amos" and "hoochie" are a pairing not unlike that of "homosexual Republican." The words inherently don't work together and result in some truly bizarre, yet unintentionally comical, moments. This is a woman's empowerment anthem gone horrifyingly wrong; the end product is a strange not-parody in which Tori proclaims she's "[bringing] home the bacon!" as her man is cheating on her with the title character. During all of this, Tori throws in banal vocalisms such as uh-uh! and ooh-hoo-hoo, yeah! and is supported by music that can only be described as "bongos and various metallic debris beating a piano to death." It's fun for sheer "What the f***?!"-value a few times, but you'll want to steer clear of it after that.
"Cars and Guitars" and "Ireland" are two more incredibly embarrassing pieces that get lumped together by my brain. The former starts out with a shuffling cha-cha-cha-cha vocal styling and accompanying arrangement that sounds like it really wants to be Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Mak'er," but, unfortunately, the song is really too boring and lifeless to reach such an achievement. How Tori thought this would make a good single for radio is beyond me. The latter song starts out with a sha-na-na-na vocal styling, then beats me in the head with the eye-rollingly bad lyric Driving in my Saab on my way to Ireland and continues on as a plodding song that's too bored to even "shuffle" the way "Cars" does. I confuse the two on a regular basis since both are truly uninteresting songs with no redeeming qualities.
I really wish I could say I like "Ribbons Undone"; it is, after all, Tori's dedication to her daughter, Natashya. But I've never been a fan of songs where established musicians vomit out "AWW LET ME TELL YOU ALL HOW MUCH I LOVE MY NEWBORN KID" clichés because 1) I can't relate to such subject manner, since I neither have nor want children, and 2) the delivery of said songs is usually sappy, cavity-inducing nonsense. Tori's dedication to her daughter is really no different than the other dime-a-dozen child dedications out there, with the only real exception being that she sounds shockingly bored here; history shows that Tori is extremely capable of getting into her performances, but this one is almost all auto-pilot. She also manages to stop using her trademark obtuse metaphors long enough for me to understand what she's talking about but, unfortunately, I'm still not inspired to care and, unless her intent was to lull her daughter to sleep at night with this surprisingly-unemotional, boring-as-all-hell arrangement, I probably won't ever find a reason to defend this song.
"The Power of Orange Knickers" shows up at track three and almost singlehandedly manages to kill the album. If the power of the orange knickers is to make Tori and her duet partner, Irish singer/songwriter Damien Rice, drone "The power of orange knickers!" about twenty times during the course of a 3:36 lesson in tedium, then they're certainly potent knickers. Because, really, this one of the worst, if not the worst, songs in Tori's entire catalogue. Tori and Damien sound like total morons because, in the first place, they really do sing the words in the title about two dozen times in such a short time frame. And even ignoring the fact that it's an incredibly stupid lyric to begin with, it's sung with the same flat, robotic, emotionless tone for the duration of the song, with volume being the singular thing that changes about their delivery. I couldn't even tell you what the rest of the song was about... if there even are other lyrics. Tori and Damien are too busy subscribing to the cult of powerful, mind-sucking orange knickers for the majority of the song for me to care.
- The Rest -
I must have listened to this album about fifty times in the three years I've owned it and the rest of the songs could be easily summed with the following adjectives: bland, boring, lifeless, nasal, uninspired, uninteresting, etc. I think the most notable thing about The Beekeeper is how much Tori's music had regressed in the decade since she first rose to prominence as a solo artist. As a lyricist, Tori has been wildly inconsistent between albums, but she always had passion and conviction in her voice, even as she sang ridiculous things like I've got Big Bird on my fishing line! Compare this with "The Beekeeper" the song, which is yet another on the long list of songs featured on this album that could be described as "sleepy" and "tiring," and you'll hear a Tori Amos struggling to get through each note without falling asleep.
What further kills this album is the music. It's not hard to see why "Sleeps with Butterflies" was the choice for the lead single here: it's the only song with a chorus that's instantly pleasant and memorable. Indeed, this album is a wasteland when it comes to hooks, and the musical compositions, which generally show a lack of melody or complexity, are content to back up the tired, boring vocals: if you were to back me into a corner and demand a description of, say, the track "Toast," I'd seriously wouldn't know what to say because I can't even remember it as soon as it's over. Even on songs like "Martha's Foolish Ginger," which opens like a military dirge, the fresh ideas that Tori brings to the table just sit there, blending into the background, and it makes you wonder why she was even trying to "experiment" in the first place.
The biggest drawback of The Beekeeper, however, is the length. This Tori's second in a string of three consecutive albums with eighteen-plus songs that reach eighty minutes, and this isn't even including the similarly-long Boys for Pele disc. The Beekeeper was honestly the first album that made me realize that maybe, just maybe, the human attention span is not usually prepared to handle an album that goes on for eighty minutes, especially the songs have such notable homogeneity. Surely three of the songs that clock in over five minutes, "Witness," "The Beekeeper" and "Marys of the Sea" could have been edited down to preserve my sanity, while the useless two-minute songs like "Original Sinsuality" and the aforementioned, horrible "Hoochie Woman" could have been omitted entirely. But, alas, as Tori pull the same tricks on the wonderful Scarlet's Walk and the good-but-could-have-been-great American Doll Posse, I doubt she'll ever learn.
The Beekeeper is quite possibly the worst album that has come out with Tori Amos' name attached to it, as it's less passionate or adventurous than Boys for Pele, less experimental than to venus and back, less humorous than Y Kant Tori Read, and, yes, even less interesting than Strange Little Girls, which is commonly seen as Tori's worse album. If nasal, unemotional vocals, dull, plodding music, and lyrics that manage to be simultaneously obtuse and unrewarding sound appealing to you, then you should probably go and purchase The Beekeeper right now. As for me, I much prefer the passion, the conviction, the lively music and the sometimes-relatable/always-intriguing lyrics of Little Earthquakes, Under the Pink, from the choirgirl hotel and Scarlet's Walk. The Beekeeper gets two stars for the handful of songs that manage to keep me awake and nothing more.
Great Music to Play While: Wondering why Tori looks twice her age on the cover, and in the liner notes, of this CD and if the recording process of the album caused this phenomenon.
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