It's so uncool but it's the anthem album for some of us
Written: Sep 16 '05 (Updated Jan 01 '06)
Product Rating:
Pros: This is the Abbey Road of Tori's career.
Cons: Tori's so uncool.
The Bottom Line: Boys for Pele is the most misunderstood, trashed album in Tori's discography, but for her devoted first wave of fans - it remains our anthem album.
meagandowney's Full Review: Boys for Pele by Tori Amos
Far be it from me to write a review that competes with or strays from an epinions lead author (especially one I really respect and trust), but I have to give this album its props. This is probably the most trashed, misunderstood, and overlooked album in Tori's discography and though I'll be lucky if this opinion garners any hits at all, in true epinions form I will be the voice of dissent writing for the pure love of the product.
First - let's discuss what Tori was to many adolescent women in the 1990's. She sang songs that were impressionistic (particularly on her 1994 release Under the Pink, featuring Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame), steeped in strange metaphors and surprises that somehow were held together by her classical piano training and excess of insight. For those who didn't find her lyrics and melodies completely indecipherable, she wrote the book on what it meant to deal with dying love in Little Earthquakes, revenge in Me and a Gun, and sex in Leather. Back then, in the good old days, it really was cool to like Tori. It meant, in Torispeak, that you were a "raisin girl" as opposed to a "cornflake girl." And we en masse, for the most part, thought that really was a good solution.
So, you may ask yourself, why not just grow up? And I'll tell you, I did do some growing in 1998 after the release of From the Choirgirl Hotel at a concert when I was 21 and surrounded by screaming 14 and 15 year olds. That album was the beginning of my departure away from Tori. I defeatedly ushered in the new generation of Tori fans who would come to admire her watered down, bubble gum songs with NONprofound lyrics ("she's addicted to nicotine patches"??? kinda doesn't have the same punch as "i shaved every place where you've been, babe" from Blood Roses on Boys for Pele). Nevermind her Stranglers cover! But I don't want to be a hatah. They are feeling a different Tori and God bless them for it. But the Tori on Boys for Pele is the quintessential "MY TORI."
Now for the album. I will make the case that part of what makes this album stick out like a sore thumb from her others (in a welcome way or not) is that it is in many ways a collaboration with the ghost of Trent Reznor who she was known to have an affair with after meeting him on Under the Pink.
She was no stranger to Trent. She caught his eye after her hit album Little Earthquakes' most famous song "Precious Things" garnered airplay. Here's the lyric - follow the red dot to sing along:
"With her Nine Inch Nails and little facist panties tucked inside the heart of every nice grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrl"
That would get any man's attention. And during this time, Trent was releasing his Closer song that would leave an indelible mark on radio and women - but in a different way. Take the following lyric, for example:
"I want to f*** you like an animal.
I want to feel you from the inside.
I want to f*** you like an animal.
My whole existence is flawed.
You get me closer to God."
Now THAT would get any woman's attention. Particularly codependent ones. So here are the two kinds of musical icons that collided in the making of Boys for Pele. This collaboration with his ghost becomes increasingly apparent on Caught a Lite Sneeze (as opposed to the full-blown sickness of love) when she sings:
". . .made my own Pretty Hate Machine.
Boys on the inside, boys on the outside
Boys in the middle and you're not here."
She recorded this album in a church in Ireland with a harpsichord. Sounds pretty Toriesque to me, but the album art features her suckling a pig. Kinda makes me think of March of the Pigs and every other pig imagery used by Trent Reznor during that time. Okay, so judging from the lyrics in Boys for Pele and Tori's reluctance to sing songs from the album in later years, Trent musn't have been a real knight in shining armor.
But why do I love this album so when everyone else, including Tori, just wants it to go away?
Well here are a few reasons:
1) Here lyrics are so impressionistic but borrow from the mythical to the extent that you can easily substitute your own experiences and emotions with hers. After all, what girl doesn't need "a big loan from the girl zone" now and again.
2) This is the break up album. Chicks need their own break up albums just as much as guys. Particularly after abusive, twisted relationships that make you say, "Whoa. I'd better look at every detail of how I got into that so I can talk about it to my therapist."
3)The melodies are far better and more complex than earlier masterpieces. Everyone had fallen in love with "the girl and her piano," but she takes risks with horns, strings and of course, the harpsichord in Boys for Pele. There is thus more to control and deal with, but in the isolation of an Irish church, Tori has room to concentrate and shine.
4) This is her first and possibly only ALBUM. Think Abbey Road. Doesn't get the most airplay, but over time is considered a masterpiece, complete with interludes and intros and head scratching album art.
Now a few songs, like Putting the Damage On flatly do not work. Thank God for the newer wave at that time, CD's, which allowed you to quickly skip past these duds. (Remember how cool that was?) But, on the whole, her risks do pay off. Why in the world they had to try to make Professional Widow into a dance mix, I'll never understand. But the songs in their purest forms are quiet, creeping, squealing things that are exorcised out of us chicks after we break up from abusive, creative, tortured artist types like Trent Reznor. OKAY??
Here are the lyrics to a particularly good song that sheds some light on this kind of relationship. I'm including some lyrics here for the benefit of the many people who say they simply can't understand what the heck she's actually singing:
"Blood roses blood roses back on the street now.
Blood roses blood roses back on the street now.
Can't forget the things you never said.
On days like these gets me thinking.
When chickens get a taste of your meat.
When chickens get a taste of your meat, yes.
You gave him your blood and your warm little diamond.
He likes killing you after you're dead.
You think I'm a queer. I think you're a queer. I think you're a queer. Said I think you're a queer.
And I shaved every place that you been boy.
Said I shaved every place where you've been, yes.
God knows, I know I've thrown away those graces.
God knows, I've thrown away those graces.
God knows, I know I've thrown away those graces.
The Belle of New Orleans
tried to show me once how to tango.
Wrapped around your feet,
wrapped around like good little roses.
Blood roses blood roses back on the street now.
Blood roses blood roses back on the street now, now, now.
Now you've cut out the flute from the throat of the loon. At least when you cry now, he can't even hear you.
When chickens get a taste of your meat come on,
come on, come on, come on,
when it sucks you deep yes.
Sometimes you're nothing but meat."
Other lyrical highlights include the following:
"Give me peace, love and a hard c**k." and
"Got an angry snatch, girls you know what I mean.
When swivellin' that hip doesn't do the trick. . ."
Here are the songs on Boys for Pele:
Beauty Queen
Horses
Blood Roses
Father Lucifer
Professional Widow
Mr Zebra
Marianne
Caught a Lite Sneeze
Muhammad My Friend
Hey Jupiter
Way Down
Little Amsterdam
Talula
Not The Red Baron
Agent Orange
Doughnut Song
In The Springtime of His Voodoo
Putting The Damage On
Twinkle
Now here's a fun matching game! Try to match the songs above with their fun facts and interpretive meanings below. Don't cheat!!
a)The father/mother songs that must appear in some variation on every one of her records as she works out the psychological baggage behind her romantic mistakes.
b)The one you should just skip
c)The one about being a transition girl for gifted creative guys who treat you like crap while giving their "springtime" to some other ho.
d)The other one you can just skip.
e)The one that says, hey I didn't catch the full-blown sickness of your love. Yay for me.
f)The one that says there's light at the end of the tunnel
g)The one about the women destroyed by these kinds of relationships and the parts of us that are tempted to do the same
h)The one that pulls us in as the vulnerable little girl
i)The one she sang better on Saturday Night Live
j)The one about papooses and fig newtons that I really just don't get but sing along to anyway
k)The three that have the prettiest, most classically influenced melodies and the silliest lyrics
l)The one that, sadly, was made into a dance mix and once shockingly played at a rave I attended. Also features the cry "Starf***er! Just like my Daddy" that would inspire Trent Reznor's song entitled Starf***er years later.
m)The best middle-finger of a break up song Tori's ever written
n)The song that likens women's sacrifices to Jesus because it's just not fair that guys get to do this all of the time and chicks can't just because we're chicks.
a=Way Down and Little Amsterdam
b=Putting the Damage On
c=In the Springtime of His Voodoo
d=Doughnut Song
e=Caught a Lite Sneeze
f=Twinkle
g=Marianne
h=Beauty Queen/Horses
i=Hey Jupiter
j=Talula
k=Not the Red Baron, Mr. Zebra and Agent Orange
l=Professional Widow
m=Blood Roses
n=Muhammed My Friend
How did you do? Why not take another listen to this overlooked album and see what I mean. I won't tell anyone you did. :)
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