Amos had a few noisy moments on her previous efforts, but Boys for Pele, named for the ritual sacrifice of virgins to the Hawaiian volcano Goddess, Pele, is another world entirely. Though it begins softly enough with "Beauty Queen" and "Horses," she quickly moves on to the meat of the matter. Enter Amos' brand-new harpsichord on the third track, "Blood Roses," playing brisk baroque while the singer unfolds a tale of losing someone she loved dearly: "You gave him your blood and your warm little diamond/He likes killing you after you're dead." Again and again she returns to the phrase, "When chickens get a taste of your meat, girl/Sometimes you're nothing but meat." Indeed.
Two songs later, we are reintroduced to the harpsichord, now as a blistering blues instrument that would take Jimmy Page's breath away. Again the anger surges, this time at a creed of woman like Jackie Onassis -- or Courtney Love. "Don't blow those brains yet/We gotta be big, boy, we gotta be big/Starfucker just like my Daddy," Amos howls while the rhythm section thumps and grinds behind her. It's a gorgeous celebration of noise and anger that is unsettling at first, then becomes as addicting as any of her finest and most fragile tunes.
On "In the Springtime of His Voodoo," she is a dervish gone mad from the heat, a woman totally bewildered in the aftermath of a breakup. The harpsichord spirals, the bass looms, the percussion shimmies along, and Amos' piano and vocals do a duet some might call obscene. In a nod to the Eagles, "Standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona/And I'm quite sure I'm in the wrong town" takes on an entirely new meaning. The southern blood reappears on several tracks, including the gospel-flecked "Way Down" and the after-midnight crooning of "Little Amsterdam" -- a vindicating story of interracial marriage in the deep south, punctuated by the line, "Mama, it wasn't my bullet."
The first single, "Caught a Lite Sneeze," is in a sense the bridge of the album; noisy, fast-paced, but delicately framed by its spidery vocal melodies. In yet another tale of love gone wrong, Amos' chorus is devastating: "Building tumbling down/Didn't know our love was so small/Couldn't stand it at all." A similar tune, "Talula," never measures up to the spine-tingling wonder of "Sneeze," never finds its own rhythm or meaning. It has many of the same ingredients, but they aren't as nourishing.
"Pele" also nestles a number of quieter tunes under its wings, each one a jewel in its own right. The first full-length track, "Horses," follows a brief, haunting prologue called "Beauty Queen." Amos hearkens back to the white horses from Earthquakes in the lines "I got me some horses to ride on, to ride on/They say that your dreams can't go there," On "Mr. Zebra," she appeals to another horsey character: "Hello Mr. Zebra/Can I have your sweater?/Cause it's cold in my hole." The song is playful, almost a Broadway romp, which eases itself into the mournful "Marianne." The name is a familiar one to those who have listened to Amos' music; after years, Amos finally reveals the story surrounding the death of one of her childhood friends.
"Father Lucifer" is a surprisingly gentle ballad, not to the Dark One himself, but to Amos' own dark side -- a notion she reveals in cryptic hints like, "He says he reckons I'm a watercolor stain/He says I run and then I run from him." The true God-slagging comes later on "Mohammad My Friend," with whom she muses that the person crucified by the Romans "was a girl/Back in Bethlehem."
In true Tori style, the most haunting tracks are the subtlest, appearing towards the end of her eighteen-song elegy. "The Doughnut Song" sparkles with an almost-angelic sadness in its lyrics of self-defeat: "And if I'm wasting all your time, I guess you never learned to take/And if I'm hanging on to your shade, I guess I'm way beyond the pale." Even at her emotional worst, Amos finds strength in sweetly-voiced lines like "Happy for you... and I'm sure that I hate you," outdoing those who feel that whining vindictiveness makes for great songwriting. "Twinkle" closes the album, a breathtaking celebration of women's strength even in the worst of cases. "She said, 'I killed a man, T./I gotta stay hidden in this Abbey,'" she reflects. "But I can see that star/When she twinkles."
Amos is not known for making people comfortable by singing nice little prepackaged songs, and truly appreciating her music takes effort. Listening to "Pele" repeatedly is the key; nothing will be obvious the first time around. But as time goes on, the puzzle will begin to piece itself together. Secret messages will be decoded, mysterious languages will unfold and the album's numerous namedrops (Big Bird and Gladys Knight among them) will begin to take on unimaginable dimensions. The sensual songstress is flowering and changing before our eyes. One lyric in "Father Lucifer" warns, "Nothing's gonna stop me from floating." After the darkness comes the light, after the pain comes new fire.
After two years of silence, Tori Amos is back.
This article was originally published in Addicted to Noise.