Messing with the Master: Tori Amos

S1E14: Boys for Pele || It’s Gotta Be Big (Super Sized Season Finale)

In terms of narrative, composition and sheer scope as a record, Boys for Pele is one of the most audacious “pop” records to come out of the 1990s. Make no mistake: despite its twisty narrative, mysteriously confrontational lyrics and non-traditional take on song structure, Pele was a considerable mainstream success, selling more than 2 million copies worldwide and going platinum in the United States. Part harrowing journey into darkness and fury, part coming to terms with the aftermath of a shattered psyche, Boys for Pele might actually be the anti-pop record. Ironically, Tori’s biggest-selling single off the record (her biggest-selling single of all time), was a club mix of the Southern Gothic tale of madness and revenge “Professional Widow” that focuses on the lyric “it’s gotta be big.” Those who entered into this disorienting, often sinister world expecting a four on the floor rave were instead greeted by a smoky, deeply-complex rumination on one woman’s singular version of The Blues. The album finds Tori in a fugue descending into a hallucinatory abyss of anger, despair and confusion; the cathartic kind that evokes the wrenching neurotic pain of a genteel Blanche Dubois cracking in A Streetcar Named Desire. Its roots are distinctly rooted in the deeply soulful, deeply-odd South that might have been written about by Flannery O’Connor or filmed by D.W. Griffith, which is reflected in the choices made for the album’s artwork: Tori appears as the guardian of ghostly, forgotten children much like Lillian Gish does in the 1955 film The Night of the Hunter. All of these works are both branded with the red-hot iron of righteous Christianity and haunted by the foul-smelling sulfuric specter of the Devil himself. It is that unholy and unsettling bilocation and brilliant intertextuality that marks a true literary work of genius, artistic masterpiece, or any consummate objet d’art, all of which are applicable lenses through which to view an intimate, intricate, and positively harrowing work such as Boys for Pele. Categorization is futile, but the ways in which Pele can be read are staggering.
Playlists:
KK
MM
JV

S1E13: Night of Hunters || There Has Been a Shattering

“I think the thing that just astounds me about Tori is that she can take a bit of something like a melody or harmonic sequence for some of these pieces that were the inspiration and create something truly her own, showing how truly powerful her own creative stamp is. I think of Night of Hunters as a 70-minute song with 30 pieces of music held together by 13 sets of interlocking lyrics. Now that’s composing!
Tori was able to keep the narrative in my head at all times, very articulated and intricate. T would make sure I totally got it, explaining every facet and background info in just amazing detail. The story became flesh and blood, for me as it was for Tori.
I have to confess that it was bliss working with T on Night of Hunters. We talked for at least one hundred hours about this record. The amount emotions and deliberations and ponderings and weighing was incredible. [This is] the most complex project I think I personally have worked on, from musical/dramatic perspective for sure, but what was evenheavier was the emotional investment — the dreams, the considerations of narrative. Every few bars mood changes slightly, very little is repeated.
As far as style, and that would include harmonic choices and variations, melodies and variation, Tori has used this language since we first worked together. What has changed is her intensity, the refinement of this language, centering on the narrative. This , I think, is the driving force behind all of Tori”s music, and on this record for Deutsche Grammophon, she can use all of of her creativity, unbounded and without the restraint of ‘pop’ convention to make a extended multidimensional narrative, dramatic and compelling,and this includes her vocal and piano performances.”
John Philip Shenale - Night of Hunters Composer, Arranger and Collaborator to Matt Mazur, 2011.
Playlists:
Joey
Matty
Kristen
 

S1E12: Strange Little Girls || Mommy Makeovers

With Strange Little Girls, Tori Amos approached the covers album as concept album, offering reinterpretations of 12 diverse male-authored tracks from the perspectives of an assortment of female characters. The project was inspired originally by by the homophobic and misogynistic messages which Amos believed to be prevalent in popular song at the beginning of the 21st century.
“People were talking to me about how popular music was getting more violent,” she recalled in Piece by Piece. “Male songwriters were saying these really malicious things … and I really felt … that a generalized image of the antiwoman, antigay heterosexual man had hijacked Western male heterosexuality and brought it to the mediocrity of the moment.”
The innovation of Strange Little Girls is to extend this debate into the realm of rock, and to recognise mainstream music as one of the primary cultural spheres in which gender roles get played out and patriarchal ideology disseminated. Supplemented by superb Cindy Sherman-inspired photography, the album is a rewarding and subversive work that boldly challenges the listener to reassess their relationship not only to each of these songs, but also to the wider cultural attitudes that they embody and endorse.
“I wanted to complement the significance and scope of what she was doing. I felt like we were really in tune together, with what we were searching for,” recalled Adrian Belew, the project’s guitarist. “It was very comfortable working with her. I was surprised at the whole of the record [when I first heard it]. The songs I was unfamiliar with, in the context of what I had played, really changed the way I saw her as a producer and what she had envisioned. I frequently sign Strange Little Girls CDs, and the evidence is there that this record is important to people and they make the association between me and Tori and my contribution to the record. And then I realize they were probably turned onto me by Tori, and that’s an extraordinary thing for a musician to know. It is reflective of the community she builds in her work.”
Playlists
JV
KK
MM
Songs of Tori Amos – Season 6 selections referenced in the episode
New Age
KK is team FOX
JV and MM are team FUCKS.
97 Bonnie and Clyde

S1E11: Unrepentant Geraldines || Take Your Daughter to Work Day

As she turned 50 in the spotlight, Tori Amos’ 2014 album Unrepentant Geraldines dropped and was greeted with headlines trumpeting the singer-songwriter’s “return to form” and “comeback”. But here’s the kicker: she never went anywhere.
Although she had written a musical for the stage (The Light Princess, 2013), and composed a 21st century song cycle (Night of Hunters, 2011), Unrepentant Geraldines was Amos’ first record of entirely original compositions in five years, since Abnormally Attracted to Sin (2009). If that album found Amos floating above a palette of darkly-glowing synths and sultry beats, then Geraldines was firmly grounded in what many would deem the Amos “signature” sound: a foundation built around soulful, churchy organs, classical-complex pianoscapes, and pristinely-orchestrated vocal arrangements (exemplified on the single “Promise”, which prominently features her then-15 year old daughter Natashya).
The romantic and lush album evokes and references other key moments in Amos’ catalog, while somehow possessing a distinct energy that distinguishes it as its own living, breathing experience. “Each song had to tell a story that you understood without needing to hear another song to make it make sense,” Tori told me at the time of the records release. “Although some of them are interconnected, the songs, but they needed to live on their own.” There’s no rigid adherence to any one specific style of music or instrumentation, no concept to be beholden to, and yes, while there are influences from past albums, Geraldines deploys them with fresh style and in an alchemic, organic way.
The album possesses the kind of wildness of spirit that has always permeated Amos’ work, but here that oft-explosive vivacity is contained and refined on songs “16 Shades of Blue”, with it’s emotionally articulate swagger; and on the psychedelic sonic Fata Morgana of the title track. There is a noticeable confidence in the songs — in the writing, in the delivery, and in the bright verisimilitude of her compositional landscape. Also adventurous are her lyrical arrangements and vocal delivery. “I’ve told you many times: I sound like a fairy on crack. I know that! So you have to surrender to what your pipes are.”
Please join Kristen, Matt and Joey as they tackle a pivotal moment in Tori’s discography and history. Messing With The Master: Unrepentant Geraldines is available wherever you check out podcasts.
Playlists
JV
KK
MM

S1E10: To Venus and Back || A Stroke of Venus

Content warning: this episode discusses pregnancy and child loss. Please take care while listening.
On this week's episode, we book a round trip ticket To Venus and Back. Tori's surprisingly prompt follow -up to 1998's From the Choirgirl Hotel. After an epic world tour, Tori had implied that she'd be taking a break from recording for a while and planned to release a live album with a few new bonus tracks. As Tori's want to do, those bonus tracks developed into a full -blown 11 -track album with a bonus live disc that was released on September 21st, 1999, my 17th birthday. Thank you very much.
To Venus and Back is deeply beloved by fans and for good reason. It shows Tori and her band, Matt Chamberlain on drums, Jon Evans on bass, and Steve Caton on guitars at the height of their ensemble powers, and Tori at her most sonically experimental. As Tori herself once instructed, if it's too loud, turn it up. And that's precisely what she does on To Venus and Back.
The songs feel like an organic extension of the Choirgirl sound, but to say they sounded all similar to one another would be listener malpractice. Venus occupies a sonic space that is truly unlike anything Tori has done up to that point or has done since. The mixing, the engineering, the drum looping, the vocal distortions, the manipulation of the Bosendorfer, the introduction of new and strange synthesizer samples.
Every singular moment is its own dynamic piece of a dark, twisty, truly otherworldly puzzle that Tori has constructed with this record. It's cliche to say it was ahead of its time in 1999, but given how fresh and bold and immersive it sounds in the year of Our Lord 2024, no one would argue that Tori truly wrote, performed, and produced a collection of songs that pushed not only her own boundaries, but the boundaries of her listeners.
Perhaps Tori summed it up best herself in the lyric from Spring Haze when she instructs us that quote, the only way out is to go so far in. So join us as we break the terror of the urban spell.
JV playlist
KK playlist
MM playlist
 

S1E9: American Doll Posse || Posse Popping and Wig Snatching

Ever feel like just being someone else? With the regal and roaring opus American Doll Posse, Tori Amos gave her listeners permission – and a psychic road map – to become the characters who hide in plain sight in all of our brains; even the “character” of ourselves. With healthy doses of showmanship and flamboyance, American Doll Posse saw Amos sonically embracing a towering, modern production style tinged with classic and country rock elements.   No stranger to being a sonic character actress exploring roles, ADP’s real gag was stunningly Cindy Sherman-esque: Amos would manifest her characters in a new way, by literally becoming four distinct women who each represented aspects of her own personality. Enter Clyde, Isabel, Pip and Santa -aka the Posse. Taking a page from David Bowie’s glittery glam rock opera playbook, not only would Amos portray the characters in song and for the album’s still photography, she would also be portraying them -and performing as them- in full costume nightly at her live shows.  🤯🤯🤯  While she may have fully disappeared into each character, the moment you realize Tori Amos is also playing “Tori Amos” as a character in a sequined American Flag jumpsuit, the winking concept clicks, and every lighter in the arena goes up in the air. While each of the Posse gals gets their moment in the spotlight, the overall through line of the ambitious ADP is unity, strength in numbers, as five powerful women band together to deliver a ferociously righteous rock and roll sermon about how the patriarchy needs a good old-fashioned slap across the fucking face.  Dontchu for-get to join Kristen, Matt and Joey to take a closer look at one of the most audacious records and eras of Tori’s career. Hold onto your wigs, and strap in tight for the wild ride of Messing With The Master, American Doll Posse. This one’s for the MILFs.
 
JV playlist
KK playlist
MM playlist

S1E8: Ocean to Ocean || And Then, Still She Gave

Content warning: this episode briefly discusses DV and suicide. Please take care while listening. 
“So what if you find you like to tango alone?" Tori Amos asks in the final moments of “Birthday Baby," the closing track of her 15th solo album Ocean to Ocean, released on October 21, 2021. An ode to the unexpected ways we collectively learned to both mourn and celebrate during the years-long isolation of the COVID-19 crisis, the song vacillates between a rousing eleven o'clock musical number and something a David Lynch character might sob inconsolably to while draped over a diner jukebox. 
This juxtaposition is the essence of Tori, who has been masterfully weaving the familiar, strange, tender, and unsettling for over 30 years. What immediately distinguished Ocean to Ocean upon release from Amos’ previous records, though, was its timeliness, an album written and recorded during the most hopeless heights of a global pandemic, released into a world that had barely begun to scratch the surface of its shared trauma. 
Never one to shy away from documenting her own emotional turbulence, Tori allowed Ocean to Ocean to wear its melancholy on its sleeve. It’s a record inspired and consumed by loss – loss of connection to others, loss of the self, loss of Tori's beloved mother Mary – and the process of trying to piece together both who we were before the storm and who we might become on the day after. The result is a tight, cohesive collection of songs that expertly articulates and somehow finds meaning in the deepest recesses of despair. 
Ocean to Ocean is ultimately both a technical triumph -- Tori recorded virtually from her home studio in Cornwall, England with longtime collaborators Matt Chamberlain, Jon Evans, and John Philip Shenale (quite literally oceans apart) -- and a triumph of the spirit, Tori finding the artistic and emotional strength to recontextualize a year of losses into a record of rebirth. 
So, stay with Joey, Kristen, and Matt as they unravel the gorgeous, generous fishing net that is Ocean to Ocean. 
"Get Out of that Pain," a conversation between Joey and Tori for BOMB magazine: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2020/05/06/tori-amos-resistance  
Tiny Desk Concert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SufUZu4h_m8 
JV playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7zhxFp9ESB5WH9YuWY4Rpe?si=bedb114b0215415e
KK playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2rFV8OAbjkRUsAx1sXBrFc?si=2b8a0878dcf6471c
MM playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3Cf1JxCjkBhExAKP5ug4IC?si=ae970433a23e4377

S1E7: Little Earthquakes || When Pianos Refused To Be Guitars

Content warning: this episode discusses SA. Please take care while listening. 
Objectively speaking, Tori Amos’ Little Earthquakes is one of the all time great debut records. On the latest episode of Messing With The Master, Kristen, Matt and Joe lovingly look back and contextualize this seminal album, which laid down the foundation for the mythology of Tori and created a language all her own. The bracing new musical vocabulary of Little Earthquakes truly signaled the birth of a star.
 
Very few– if any– albums from debut artists sustain the kind of power and resonance of Little Earthquakes. Amos dared to make the most private parts of her life public, infused them with poetry, gathered an army of fellow survivors, and created a genuine  community that’s with her to this day.
 
Crafting an origin story for the ages, Amos proved she understood the assignment and the stakes and caught a ride with the moon. The prom queen minister’s daughter next door made a modern rock record and became a star. It felt like we knew her and spoke the same language. Oh, these little earthquakes. Here we go again. It feels familiar because we’ve all been there. Tori took a major risk setting her diary to music,  and verbalizing the verboten, but it’s one that continues to speak directly to the hearts of countless listeners, somehow, after all these years.
Playlists:
Joey
Matt
Kristen

S1E6: From the Choirgirl Hotel || Checkout Anytime, But You Can Never Leave

Content warning: this episode discusses child and pregnancy loss. Please take care while listening. 
Tori Amos’ blazing fourth album From The Choirgirl Hotel claims a rightful place amongst legendary music by contemporaries such as Madonna, PJ Harvey, Hole, Beck and many others who released similarly iconic work in 1998.At a career high point, Amos intuitively plugged in a full band to achieve the record’s signature space-rock atmosphere and conjured some of her most electric live shows to date. Yet, inexplicably, she still was forced to face down misogynistic criticism in all corners of the male-dominated world of music journalism, even as she soared. Rolling Stone -who gave the album a four star review- couldn’t resist referring to Amos as a “space cadet”, “overeducated”, and “unsisterly” in a surprisingly barbed cover story that manages to ungraciously spend a chunk of time castigating her for the “emotional incontinence” of her preceding album Boys for Pele.Despite great resistance and even greater odds, From the Choirgirl Hotel, with its passionate storytelling and audacious compositions, tapped directly into the flashpoint of an era of exploding musical styles. Amos, in slinky deconstructed gowns over jeans and bodysuits, walked away the victor: a powerful woman reinventing herself with each new project, charting high, selling big and adhering uncompromisingly to a vision of remaining herself. So please join Kristen, Matt and Joey for the midnight sale, it’s time to check in to the Choirgirl Hotel, a record that holds you at the bottom of the sea in total darkness before releasing you back into a luminously fragmented mirrorball galaxy of ‘Tori Amos’ mythology.
 
FTCH Playlists:
JV: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3viIVIonnfbX5ZOvcsOFiY?si=20c51797e2a74e41
KK: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/61zQq6ozghLTlDnWpekQmc?si=4b297c660a224c1f
MM: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5Wn2Cxi5uOZWee64nl4wOj?si=9fac68b767bf46ea
 

S1E5: The Beekeeper || TBK, TBH

In this episode, Joey, Kristen, and Matt discuss Tori Amos' 2005 album The Beekeper. They explore the intersection of The Beekeeper with Tori's book with Ann Powers, Piece by Piece, 2000s fashion, and Tori's last record with major record labels before her emancipation day.
Joey shares his track listing, focusing on the theme of betrayal. Kristen shares her track listing, a modern take on the 3 Marys, and Matt's track list is inspired by the 1973 film Ash Wednesday, featuring Elizabeth Taylor where she plays a woman willing to get her man back by going to any length. Themes include European history, betrayal, and tumult.
 
TBK playlists:
Matt: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3gExMBT4WYGORuciSPucFP?si=aaa1703ca4e44bba
Kristen: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1qX0Bskzx3qUkK8JosAg6U?si=6ff8f5413ba04d6d
Joey: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3Ryi4xVLIENgEX8rbG2QfG?si=1376fe42683b4354
 
Other resources:
DRIVE ALL NIGHT: THE SONGS OF TORI AMOS! The boys at DAN: SOTA just released an episode on 'New Age' in their 'Strange Little Girls' season. https://open.spotify.com/episode/1aQq6MbPYxKqVMHysbHIXH?si=e7e295d122d14caa