The Beekeeper

Tori fans will love this one. Definitely a time-piece for a specific period in my life. The Power of Orange Knickers is one of my favorites. They are all great and very different from one another.

Being Tori's eight studio album, some are surprized (and sad) to find that's it's mostly a step backwards... a big step backwards, especially for long time fans.

The worst part is, that it's really not a bad album. The problem with the Beekeeper is the production and it suffers from being too long. The untapped potential can be seen in the live versions of many of these songs where Tori's performances, rooted in improvisation, give huge amounts of life to this songs.

And that's what fans are used to, out-of-the-box Tori. And The Beekeeper is very formulaic. There are many gems in it though, Parasol, Jamaica Inn, the title track, Marys of the Sea, Original Sinsuality, Witness, Garlands, Toast, Barons of Suburbia... and another track found in A Piano, Not David Bowie leave no doubt that a shorter, better produced and not so formulaic Beekeeper would have been an amazing album.

After "Scarlet's Walk" proved that Tori's fans are still with her, she turned to creating another uninspiring album in summer of 2004. Some things have happened in the past few years before the album's release. Amos' brother died and her daughter started growing up. You'd expect her to start making more vital music, but she kept doing what she seemingly does best now--churning out accessible, unfinished, not-thought-through material for her most obsessive fans. There's no one else who could enjoy this level of self-indulgence from Amos. The melodies are pure clichés, the production is flat and the songs are simply bland. Amos is producing too much material, she's losing a lot of her inspiration and she's not too keen on self-editing. I blame motherhood.

"The Beekeeper" isn't as bad as much as it's boring. There's not much room for originality and she didn't work enough on these songs to make them good. You've heard material like this a hundred times before. Her lyrics are becoming extremely trivial and this just ended her downfall as a musician. Certain songs manage to be pretty, but they're pure mediocrity when compared to her early material. There's not much room for her to express herself vocally and instrumentally--things she used to be captivating at. Which brings us to the main point: Amos is losing her creative spirits and falling short on all her artistic levels. You can't believe that this is the same woman who made stark, powerful material such as "Little Earthquakes" and "Boys for Pele".

Okay, anyone who shops on Amazon knows that Marcel Marceau could read a phone book onto a CD and still get four stars, maybe five. So five means something might be okay and four or less is the kiss of death. But, five here, because although Beekeeper doesn't have the drama of earlier CDs, which sometimes featured great songs surrounded by filler, it's the most uniformly enjoyable thing she's done in ages and can be listened to many times over. Not many weak spots on it, and as usual, good value with well more than an hour's worth.

I am pretty sure this is the right one ...only ordered one ever that i can think of came un-autographed seller / amazon NEVER contacted me after a while it just was like ok as bad as FYE for rippin ya off