Pitchfork has done a belated (guess they didnt exist yet in 96?) review of Tori Amos - Boys for Pele, very indepth and well done. even Tori has approved

Pitchfork

Tori Amos: Boys for Pele

Read Emma Madden’s review of the album.

It's not about the footballer Pele!

That is a good piece to be fair. It's much more about the circumstances around the album than the music itself, but it reads like something that has had a rare amount of thought and feeling put into it

^I thought the same, towards the end there is a bit about the music and the songs

but only at the end

I also thought the research and the thoughts behind the article were huge

It was great to see them review it and to give it the best score they've given any of her albums. I've always felt it was an overlong album with plenty of stuff that could have been culled off it. It was never going to be a gold mine for singles but Talula was her weakest at that point. She reached new depths of "abstract" lyrics on this album - particularly on Marianne

The weasel squeaks faster then a seven day week
I said Timmy and that purple Monkey
Are all down

It did spawn Hey Jupiter, which when remixed, is one of her best ever songs.

I actually love Marianne, might even be my @1 in the album, lyrics were improvised on the fly as they recorded it hence the opening line, tuna rubber little blubber in my igloo, which i adore but makes little sense :)

I agree with Colm that it's overly long. It's also probably the album of hers I've listened to least (not counting her very recent ones as I haven't even listened to all of those).

There's a handful of the songs that I do really like, namely Beauty Queen/Horses, Caught a Lite Sneeze, Hey Jupiter, Way Down, Putting the Damage On and, most of all, the absolutely gorgeous Doughnut Song. I haven't really spent too much time on any of the others so maybe they are growers and I've just not allowed them to do that, but the singles Talula and Professional Widow (when I heard the original version) actually put me off getting the album for a long time and I didn't buy it until after Choirgirl had been released and restored my faith - I must have been really put off as Pink was one of my favourite albums and I'd usually flock straight to a follow up.

I think Pele killed her off a bit, definitely in the UK at least. Something like Spark was what I was looking for from Tori at this point, something that built on the work on Earthquakes and Pink, and my gut feeling is that it would have been better received commercially. Even though I really like Caught a Lite Sneeze, it took a fair while to grow on me and was quite a difficult lead single

I think she really pivoted from mainstream pop to alt indie with Pele and remained there since.

it's easily my least fav out of her 5 first albums but if you ask the hardcore fans they all would prob say it's their fav.

I'm also more of a Hotel fan. Pele is like a revenge album, like kill all men, guess very cathartic for Tori herself and for many of the fans;

Hotel is more like a sad album, more polished, more about vulnerability and grief

I love Marianne too but that's probably because it sounds most like her earlier material.

The album was just a disappointment after Under the Pink which is still in my top 5 albums ever and after Caught a Lite Sneeze as I really loved that and still do.

The raw talent here

Choirgirl is her most rounded album. I think if it was my first Tori album then it would be my favourite. It's just consistently interesting. Only She's Your Cocaine isn't really really good.

Edited July 29Jul 29 by Colm

I forgot how much I love Hey Jupiter. The origin of the song is apparently John Lennon's ghost appearing to Tori :) She doesn't name names here but she's referring to Lennon and Yoko Ono, Tori has described her other times as "rich and not nice".

"well, i was really in a bind because, um, i was doing some bad things. i was in a love triangle with these, uhh.., i don't know if they were real men now...i'm not...i'm confused about the whole thing! let's see , i was lying in bed...um, strange things happened to you on tour. like strange englishman start sitting at the end of your bed, apparitions of dead guys . and they start singing songs to you. and this guy was definitely dead, and he was definitely singing to me. um, so i'm confused about the copyright laws. i'm not sure if i need to call his ex-wife and give him part of the song or not. but, why should i do that! she's rich...she's not nice. and so, anyway, i kept the copyright, the guys forgot who i was, and the song's mine." [answer to question of the circumstances surrounding the writing of Hey Jupiter, VH1 Storytellers]

The remix version of the song was called the Dakota version, with Dakota being the building in NY where Lennon was living and were he was killed.

I love that remix, especially the new bridge at the end, the one that goes:

I go from day to day

I know where the cups are

I know where the car is parked

I know, he isn't you