It's a HOLIDAY (POSSE) BONUS! In this very special holiday episode of 'Messing With The Master', we delve into Tori Amos's holiday music across many decades, exploring her artistic evolution, personal memories of that amazing Midwinter Graces promo tour, and the significance of family in her work. We discuss the impact of Tori's upbringing and her respect for holiday traditions, while acknowledging that The Woman We Call Tori can rock the fuck out of anything, including Christmas music.

Playlists:

• MM
• KK
• JV

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

“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