Tori Amos' Boys for Pele - 33 1/3 Author:Elizabeth Merrick Boys for Pele is rich in mythology and texture. It is also her fans' favorite. (The fans have scientifically proven this on the internet. They love the polls.) On Boys for Pele, Amos bangs the hell out of a harpsichord and paints a sonic landscape that every woman knows but had honestly (I know this sounds weird now, but it was true then) barely... more » heard spoken before. Is she really saying that? She gets the texture down of your most self-hating one-night-stands and obsessions?without being obvious, and by tying it in to much bigger?mythological?stories. These stories, these nooks and crannies of women's hearts, find a shape that makes them matter, makes them mythological, sexual (not just sexy), smart, angry, broken, vulnerable, complex, powerful in a way that is not some kind of cheesy go-girl catchphrase or shoulder-pad business suit. Before Boys for Pele, in the culture at large, going near any of this stuff as content seemed more like a trite Cosmo article on the dangers of cutting or of anorexia, a cheap warning against being too Sylvia Plath. (The album's biggest predecessor, somehow, is Joni Mitchell's Blue.) This is the landscape that Alanis and Fiona Apple try to get to, but Boys for Pele does it with adequate depth and drawing on such rich mythology that the album becomes a transformative work, a key to its listeners' inner worlds, in many cases. Amos has often mentioned Persephone's journey to the underworld in context of this album, and it does in fact take you down through the unconscious realms?and back up again?that are hard to get to otherwise.« less