Boys for Pele
| Tori Amos
Boys for Pele
Boys for Pele is the third studio album by American singer and songwriter Tori Amos. Preceded by the first single, "Caught a Lite Sneeze", by three weeks, the album was released on January 22, 1996, in the United Kingdom, on January 23 in the United States, and on January 29 in Australia. Despite the album being Amos's least accessible radio material to date, Boys for Pele debuted at number two on both the US Billboard 200 and the UK Albums Chart, making it her biggest simultaneous transatlantic debut, her first Billboard top 10 debut, and the highest-charting US debut of her career to date.-Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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AllMusic
Boys for Pele is the harshest and most challenging work in Tori Amos' catalog. However, it also stands as the most cathartic, nourishing, and artistically thrilling of her career.
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Sputnik Music
January 23, 2008. An unfairly maligned near-masterpiece.
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Ultimate Guitar
I truly love this album. I think it's a real work of art.
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Vanity Fair
November 6, 2014. The Songs of Tori Amos’s Boys for Pele Speak for Themselves When Boys for Pele came out in 1996, many fans of Tori Amos’s fire-breathing approach to singing from behind a piano regarded it as her most powerful release. Plenty more still do.
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PopMatters
January 21, 2016. It’s been 20 years since Tori Amos slammed down the gauntlet and set her piano afire, willing and possibly eager to sacrifice anyone who spurned her to writhe in Pele’s eternal flames. Boys for Pele still burns as hot as when first unleashed -- the raw nerve endings exposed, the emotional swings still fresh. Seething rage and the promise of retribution give way to tremulous vulnerability.
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Drowned In Sound
November 21, 2016. That intimacy is what at the heart of Pele’s fire. The album is not about a breakup. It’s about surviving any painful loss, finding uncharted strength within oneself to turn the ruins into something better.
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Bloomsbury
Released in 1996, Amos's third album, Boys for Pele, represents the height of Amos's willingness to explore the ugly qualities that make all of her music, even her more conventionally beautiful albums, so uncomfortably, and so wonderfully, strange.
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Washington Blade
November 18, 2016. Despite the one-two punch of her now-classic first two albums, . . .Atlantic Records were in a state of shock when in 1996 Amos delivered her third album, the extraordinary “Boys for Pele.” Still, “Boys for Pele” is an album that richly deserves the lavish 20th anniversary treatment and will hopefully draw a new generation of fans with its innate power of beauty, heartbreak, rage and ultimately resolve.
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Spectrum Culture
A concept album about the problems with and various facets of masculinity, religion and spirituality, and making sacrifices to the volcano goddess Pele, amongst other topics, the album is a difficult, demanding listen—and a surprisingly rewarding one.
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Salon
January 23, 2016. By 1996, Amos was already an icon—but this album moved her into a whole new level of power. The album was not only Amos' longest full-length to date, but it boasted richer, more ornate instrumentation and flourishes than her previous records.
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Albumism
January 22, 2016. . . . Boys for Pele is unequivocally the work of a brave, vital artist who has taken thrilling risks throughout her storied 25-year career, in the spirit of preserving her creative freedom and adventurous approach to songcraft. . . . And Boys for Pele is arguably the most powerful musical statement she has ever made.
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Pon De Way Way Way
April 6, 2015. At its best, the work on here is transcendent but it is let down by an inability to curb its excesses – a flaw that would come to overshadow many of Tori’s later works. Individually there are few tracks that fail to reach an exceptional standard but, as an album, it just doesn’t come together for me.
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Rolling Stone
February 8, 1996. Boys for Pele begins gently enough and indeed never works itself into a lather, which is one of Amos’ failings; she doesn’t seem to know how to rage.
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FEM Newsmagazine
May 5, 2017. The music of “Pele” spans music idioms from classical Western music to the pop and alternative music of the mid-90’s. Amos still works within the unique singer-songwriter framework she carved out with her solo debut, “Little Earthquakes”—a blend of classical piano, acapella, folk, glam, soft and pop rock forms—however, she expands her palette, incorporating jazz, funk, and electronics.
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Boycotting Trends
November 16, 2016. When it came out in 1996, Boys for Pele sounded like nothing else out there, and, 20 years on, the album’s freshness, strangeness and idiosyncrasy haven’t dimmed. The record’s heady mix of styles - with classical flourishes . . . merging with post-punk fury and ghostly gospel interludes segueing into surreal show-tune strut or achingly beautiful torch songs - remains as confounding as it is cohesive.
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The Dent - The Village Voice
February 13, 1996. While the refined craft of these tracks is exciting, Amos really runs amok when she returns to earth to plumb the realms where women, shut out of the sky, have traditionally been confined. If you can get past the awful title and Valley Girl diction . . . . Review fo Boys for Pele The Village Voice
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Ink Blot Magazine's review
The sound here is captivating - her hypnotizing Bösendorfer piano adding to the child-like wonder of her songs. It's all quintessential Tori and a delicious follow-up to 1994's Under The Pink.
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Dodax.ch
Boys for Pele is the harshest and most challenging work in Tori Amos' catalog. However, it also stands as the most cathartic, nourishing, and artistically thrilling of her career.
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Ethans Greats
. . . Boys For Pele is the album that Amos, acting also as producer, dared to put her lunatic head into, and we’re all a little saner for it.
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Flazeda
August 10, 2015. Although beautifully crafted both conceptually and musically, this album is definitely no walk in the park and not one to listen to unless you have 70 minutes of uninterrupted ‘me time’ to truly commit to the cause, . . . .
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Echoes
Amos is Back and More Fiery Than Ever With Pele.
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EW
With each album, the ambitions of Tori Amos grow grander, but not necessarily better. . . . she mucks up her narratives with nonsensical imagery or jarring pop-culture references.
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Plugged In
A weird, acerbic and pointless effort.
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Stereogum
January 22, 2016. Boys For Pele is an album only a rock star would make. It’s way too long, often wildly self-indulgent, and designed to dazzle you with its virtuosity. This, of course, is also what makes it great. It’s also an album that finds Amos leaving nothing in the reserve tanks, wildly flouting any preconceived notion of what “a Tori Amos album” could sound like.
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Diandra Reviews It All
November 18, 2016. It has been near 20 years since Boys For Pele was released, and this album still encapsulates best what fans love most of Tori Amos: her gothic take on pop ballads.
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Entropy
January 22, 2016. I’m so thrilled to offer this tribute to Boys for Pele here. An album now twenty years old and nothing, not one thing, has ever come close to it. It sounds like nothing else on earth; it feels like nothing else on earth.
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Review Corner
December 29, 2016. So, it’s a powerful album from a classically trained musician baring her soul, exploring mythology, religion and gender with constant reference to patriarchies.
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Wilson & Alroy's Record Reviews
I still don't get some of the more esoteric numbers like "Beauty Queen/Horses," but it's certainly a heartfelt, unique creation, and the 18-song collection never falls into a rut. (DBW)
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Music Street Journal
This album is yet another wonderful work from Tori Amos. Her style combines wonderful lyrics, that are at times a bit on the gritty side, with music that calls to mind Kate Bush, without copying her.
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FYE
For Amos, the album was a step into a different direction, in terms of singing, songwriting, and recording, and is experimental in comparison to her previous work.
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The Bent*Spud
At once harsh, frantic, gentle, disturbed and dark, it’s a sprawling and unapologetic ode to feminism at its core.
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Welcome to Sunny Florida
Musically, it’s adventurous, incorporating a veritable misfit orchestra: strings, church bells, a sousaphone, bagpipes, a gospel choir. Lyrically, it explores the roles, responsibilities, and dirty, dirty work of women across the expansive smudge of patriarchy’s horizon.
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W.L. Swarts Reviews The Universe
A good, but not great, album, Tori Amos mumbles her way past her own worthwhile poetry on Boys For Pele.
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Adrian's Album Reviews
A fine enough album, on the whole - though it is less consistent than either of its immediate predecessors.
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Trouser Press
Pop-culture references . . . abound, but the lyrics' essential meanings are utterly personal. If Amos has become more obsessive — even obtuse — fine, because her songwriting here is superb. . . .In sum, her best to date.
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My Site - The Best Entertainment
Tori Amos, the richly talented Rock artist has released her latest CD titled Boys For Pele and Wow! It’s really a good one. Tori Amos has been a heavy hitter in the Rock genre for quite some time now and Boys For Pele is an excellent illustration as to why.
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The Harvard Crimson
Amos Kicks It on Pele
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Diffuser.fm
Lyrics aside, the album documents some of Amos' most beautiful melodies and performances
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