Tori Amos

I said this a while back about Voodoo (and in particular its intro) and I hold to it:

And maybe the very specific thing about Boys for Pele which is so far out, and which maybe makes it her greatest album in the final analysis, is how it places this particular quality of her performances at the centre of almost every song. Whereas on From The Choirgirl Hotel, if she wants to do southern boogie skronk, she fucking gets the band in, on "In The Springtime of his Voodoo" the centre is always always the piano (except when, bizarrely given the surrounding song, she switches over the harpsichord). The first minute and a half is in some ways one of the most astonishing things she ever did, the way she uses these exploratory, ruminative piano lines to trace out an idiom that is not even hers except by genetic extraction - and the pay-off when the crawling baseline and percussion come in is just massive.

I love that, Tim!

I myself feel like I’m bargaining for a wrap and a barista is growling at me about it for a minute before delivering the wrap I desire, but either way the wrap is delicious

those first four albums are an all-time great run

quite unfathomable

Listening to Pele again now and every time it gets better. There are moments and phrases within the songs that are incredibly rich: "and this little masochist is lifting up her dress." In Muhammad My Friend where she mentions having her own TV show and a cheesy little theme song wafts in.

The length of the album works for it too, in contrast to a lot of bloated discs from the same time.

Maybe it was ahead of its time? I feel like a doofus for writing it off. The production is amazing.

i think very much a grower, that's the way it happened to me. the strings are incredible and Marianne for me reshaped music. i imagine it must have felt like a big risk which i think is commendable, and feels like sometimes you have to do that to get at the best nuggets