Album Reviews

Tori Amos

The Beekeeper

RS: 3of 5 Stars Average User Rating: 3.5of 5 Stars

2005

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Tori Amos suffers from the same affliction as Prince and other freakishly talented musicians: Too smart and too foolish to take direction, she overreaches and ends up making music that's too abstract and oblique. On her eighth album, she does something much less expected: She squanders her gifts on a bland record. At its worst, The Beekeeper suggests a female John Mayer or Jack Johnson. Many of these underwritten, underproduced tunes sound as if Amos could have composed them in the supermarket express lane. Her duet with Irish folk singer Damien Rice, "The Power of Orange Knickers," is surprisingly direct and catchy, but the arrangement is startlingly sterile and dull.

Fortunately, Beekeeper rallies in the second half. The title track brings back the flattering electronic sounds we heard on 1998's From the Choirgirl Hotel, and "Original Sinsuality" hearkens back to the harrowing starkness of Little Earthquakes. The frustrating part: With some ruthless editing and remixing, this maddeningly uneven eighty-minute disc could have been her best in ages.

BARRY WALTERS

(Posted: Feb 24, 2005)

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Review 1 of 1

heyjupiter110683 writes:

4of 5 Stars


I've been a fan of Tori since Little Earthquakes, and although she takes a different direction on each album she releases, The Beekeeper startled me the most up to that point. I was almost alienated by the maternal and sometimes sappy lyrics, and I was disappointed by a few melodies that seemed unusually simplified and pop-ish.
Although I didn't take to the album at first, understanding of the lyrics and background to each song created a grasp and deep respect for it. I find that with each of Tori's new albums, a background search of the stories or messages in each song will enlighten the listener to a whole new level of comprehension and appreciation that would never be expected upon just simply hearing it for the first time.

You will grow with this album- Enjoy :)

May 8, 2007 22:35:21

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