A generous "making of" DVD with Tori Amos' latest sonic journey, 'The Beekeeper' could scarcely be a subtler contrast to the hard-edged, caramel-hearted exuberance and exasperation of some pop divas.
'The Beekeeper' has an ambitious agenda, a mystic message, and bears repeated listening, maybe as the album to win minds and hearts even among people who hold that after Tori Amos came out with life's 'Little Earthquakes' in 1992, she got too weird, pretentious and well-nigh hysterical, wasting one of the greatest gifts in the whole piano-playing songwriter's business.
I wouldn't want to own everything she's done, but enjoy some of the weird paths that landed Amos up in Cornwall, rendered much less self-indulgent by a happy partnership, a strong affinity for natural ways far removed from urban existence and motherhood. Her interest in others and their music wasn't always successful when she took on the fellers with 'Strange Little Girls', a dozen covers of men's songs including an unfortunately prolonged murder of The Beatles' 'Happiness is a Warm Gun' and very successful stabs at Lou Reed and Eminem's '97 Bonnie and Clyde'. Her version of the latter is sinister, scary and astonishing.
Whatever's she tried in the past decade, Tori Amos adores concepts. Anyone who delves into arcane practices and "'highbrow" poetic literature to weave albums with them is bound to get stung.
"I liked the America mythology in her last album [Scarlett's Walk]. But is it just me, or is Tori's album concept this time around a little 'forced'," one Ryan asks at Supernova Juice. "In 20 years, I imagine a documentary where she and her friends are sitting around laughing about how 'everybody "bought" that Beekeeper crap.' Admit it: since 'Tales of a Librarian,' her schtick is wearing thin. That's not to say the music isn't good, or the ideas aren't interesting -- it's just that her modus operandi has become transparent."
There's justice in those words, for Amos has never foregone method in her "madness". But with 19 songs arranged on 'The Beekeeper' into musical gardens and her 'Garlands' lushly filmed on the must-have bonus DVD, she offers so much that anyone who approaches it without a jaundiced ear, perhaps knowing nothing of her current agenda, will be won over.
Do I sound defensive? Partly that's my contempt for the odious comparisons in which so many songwriters who have appeared on the scene since she did get written up as her clones, sometimes at their expense, mostly hers ... but enough of that axe.
Tori can defend herself. She does so with a most disarming account of 'The Power of Orange Knickers' and why she wears them sometimes. The actual song, with backing from Damien Rice, is up there with the best of her early work. 'Mother Revolution' -- evident wordplay -- is superb, like 'Original Sinsuality' and 'Goodbye Pisces' has great melodic strength.
The unfolding transparency of the honeycomb design is not a bad thing.
 The more 'The Beekeeper' is approached as a whole, the better an album whose strengths outdo its weaknesses hangs together, with mesmerising, delicate ballads that are each an invitation to explore the agenda, which consists of deep spiritual sensibilities dually sources in the little-known ''Gospel According to Mary Magdalene' (The Gnostic Society) and beekeeper shamanism.
Without a sophisticated sense of humour or roots just as deep in motherhood, a recurrent theme, the concept might come straight of the wall. It doesn't. Tori Amos has become a contented woman who rejoices in her life, home, daughter and the wildness that led to her song of tribute to Daphne Du Maurier's 'Jamaica Inn'. When nature can be serene and stunningly beautiful, as well as hostile and barren, to make a change from both lush artwork and deserts, this 'Beekeeper' is by Canadian artist Paul Elia. His Wrecovery site and gallery are a joyous excursion.
The themes of the album are approached sympathetically by Matt Ashare in an essay on 'Tori Amos in Song and Otherwise' (Portland Pheonix). Matt's right in pointing out it "isn't all that difficult". Nobody needs to know anything about the Nag Hammadi writings (Wikipedia) unearthed in 1945 to enjoy very good songs and engrossing lyrics. Tori rarely talks about her music, let alone what's behind it, but never mind a personal mythology with which I find it easy to empathise from my own experience.
On the DVD, the singer's insight into womanhood and having children is completely unforced, moving and so funnily true. Once you've got kids yourself, there's nothing cryptic in Tori Amos's outlook on loving them. There are no earthquakes here, but you'd have to be a real cynic, disabused by some failure of your own dreams to mature, to remain unmoved by what has happened to hers.
Sometimes there's no better remedy for hopelessness than a dose of somebody else's honey when it's hard-earned. Amos can even command the attention of parents who find their buzzing brats too demanding. If you catch her in the right mood, she's acquired the knack of chilling you out sufficiently to be able to appreciate their angelic side.
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*The penultimate radical rewrite? So it seemed. Then I slept on it to wake up and find the logjam left by "missing columns" had gone.
12:05:56 AM link 
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