THE BEEKEEPER
Tori Amos
Tori Amos is known for big sentiments and broad strokes, but she has abandoned the bluntness of her early work recently in favor of a more pensive, mature sound. "The Beekeeper," her follow-up to 2002's "Scarlet's Walk," is an 80-minute trek through nature, from gardens and seasons to birds and butterflies. (Speaking of nature, the expanded edition of the disc includes a packet of "flower and plant seeds.") The album flows from song to song -- a long journey rather than a series of distinct tracks.
Tori Amos reveals an abundant good nature on "The Beekeeper."
(Kurt Markus)
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Lyrically, Amos sticks with her abstract poetry, focusing on simple imagery captured in short phrases. But at times she seems almost more concerned with the words as sounds than ideas -- repeating "c'mon" over and over in the escalatingly feverish "Witness." Even with her piano and organ lines swelling under her songs, it is her vocal melodies that prove most striking. Phrases that read awkwardly on paper -- "beneath your firmaments" ("Jamaica Inn") or "carnivorous vegetarian" ("Barons of Suburbia") -- ring smoothly in the ear.
Amos presents direct narratives as well. In the dreamy "Ribbons Undone," she tells a straightforward tale of growing up, and her lulling overlapping vocals in "Sleeps With Butterflies" give her lyrics ("I'm not like the girls that you've known / But I believe I'm worth coming home to") a carefree feel.
The highlight of the album comes when Irish singer Damien Rice joins Amos on "The Power of Orange Knickers." Their voices are in perfect sync, with his low register mimicking her every warble like a shadow. As elsewhere, Amos's flowing piano lines and light percussion offset her captivating vocals, bringing her imagery to the forefront and uniting the album.
-- Catherine P. Lewis
FEATHERS
Dead Meadow
From Soundgarden to Kyuss, Fu Manchu to Fireball Ministry, many modern stoner-rock bands have done a worthy job of overheating fuzzboxes and creating nostalgia for '70s vans with lift kits. But few accomplish what Dead Meadow does, which is to create the illusion of actually being utterly and exhaustively stoned.
Armed with a new, second guitarist, the Washington quartet lumbers along on its fourth studio album like Hawkwind's spawn at an eternal battle of the bands, exuding slothlike, brain-numbing guitar melodies and "Lord of the Rings"-worthy lyrics (e.g., "From the boughs of the oak tree / three ravens wait / over his cold bones lying as they are / the wind will moan forevermore"). This might at first appear counterproductive. After all, stoner-rock is most often purchased by stoners, meaning that ingesting music of Dead Meadow's slow-activating, psychedelic potency could trigger total loss of consciousness. But that's the point. No listener will be able to resist this album's soporific blitz of textured, droning guitar chords and shimmering, lost-in-space vocals, one elephantine song drifting into the next until . . . zzzzzzzzz.
So is a CD that puts you to sleep a bad album? Not necessarily. There's a beauty to the detached manner in which Dead Meadow trudges behind your brain. "Feathers" isn't a particularly memorable collection of songs, but as a whole, it can be appreciated for the achievement that it is: effective, trippy audio NyQuil for both the "Dazed & Confused" and "Just Say No" crowds.
-- Michael Deeds
