I loved this – one of the best 33 1/3 books I've read. It functions partly as a rebuttal of the 33 1/3 book on Celine Dion, which I enjoyed but also acknowledge is a fine example of Straight White Male Bullshit. Read that one, then read this one.

I like many of Tori Amos's songs, though not this album particularly, and I wouldn't call myself a 'fan.' But even if you're not a fan of Tori Amos's music or public persona (even if you've never listened to her), there's a lot to take from this about women in the music industry, mental health, how we discuss fame and famous people, and who gets (and doesn't get) critical attention and acclaim – and why.

Tori Amos' Boys for Pele by Amy Gentry is a mixed bag. Many parts were interesting and offered some nice insight but Gentry tried too hard to make her questionable understanding of current scholarship on disgust fit an overall argument that would have been better suited to framing her own personal engagement with both this album as well as Amos' other work. Which was another annoying aspect, I wanted to read about this album, the title of the book kinda gave that impression, but there was far more discussion of her other work than was needed even for contextualizing. It almost seemed like it was there because the basic argument was so weak that filler was needed.

That all sounds like I didn't like the book, but I did. I just had to bracket the argument she was trying so desperately to make and simply enjoy the periodic insights and back story. I was an Amos fan before and after this album and was hoping to get another person's glimpse at how the book spoke to her. I didn't get a lot of that, mostly some extrapolating general broad theories from personal experience and a partial knowledge of theory and science (both physical and social). So it ended up being a bit of a let down on both the personal side (not enough) and the theoretical side (not convincing). As many others have written, disgust plays a part in much of how women are perceived in culture. That isn't new and it was not related to this specific album particularly well, though Gentry felt disgust herself when first experiencing the album, so she should have stayed with the personal and not tried to make it universal.

I would recommend this for fans of Tori Amos primarily for the moments of genuine insight and the rare moments when we glimpse a human being behind the writing and see what she thought and felt when hearing this album. As for the claim to using theory, well, using would be a generous way to put it, but there are even a couple of interesting moments there as well, but probably not quite with the desired intent.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

The author reveals a personal connection to Tori Amos - she takes us back to her 8th grade memory and her journey throughout high school with the music of Tori Amos.
I found the book very well researched, not only in terms of Tori Amos's music and influences but also on literature that shaped modern thinking and the perception of women's position in society.
There is a strong focus on "tastes" and their philosophy - what appeals to people; what disgusts people and how these shape our likes and dislikes.

The 33 1/3 series has made a name for itself by combining music criticism with anything from memoir to social theory, or often (as in the case of this book) both together. And, as a huge fan of Tori Amos, and particularly her early albums, I was champing at the bit to read this latest edition to the series looking at her Boys For Pele album. It was a great read, both challenging and thought-provoking, encompassing everything from Kant's philosophy and the concept of 'good' taste, to biographical details about Amos's early career and the recording of the Boys For Pele album, to more traditional musical criticism. However, it's very possible I enjoyed it so much because I'm currently a postgrad student in sociology and therefore what one reviewer has (not inaccurately) described as pretentious, I relished. But that's the nature of the 33 1/3 series: anyone coming to them for straightforward biography is always going to be disappointed.

I love Tori and Boys for Pele is her best record, by far.

This book. Well. My problem with 33 1/3 as a series - which I'm sure some see as a strength - is that you never know what you're going to get. Sometimes you get fascinating journalism, sometimes you get in-depth interviews with a personal lens (Drew Daniel's TG book), sometimes you get short stories (that PJ Harvey one).

I just didn't vibe with this book, and stopped reading it. A very personal experience of the book, and whilst a valid viewpoint, just not something I'm interested in. Would've loved something more about the album. Perhaps I didn't give it enough of a chance, but the essay-like (as in modern essays, if you know what I mean) about the subjects just didn't grab me.

Although I was really looking forward to reading about Tori’s ‘Boys for Pele’ (I’ve been sort of obsessed for 24 years with all things Tori) I found myself glazing over whenever the discussion moved into a discourse about the nature of disgust or how the concept of taste can be, I don’t know, something about Kant and aesthetic philosophy. I blame myself; I saw Tori on the cover and neglected to read the blurb where it warned me that this book was a “blend of memoir, criticism, and aesthetic theory”.

Sure, I understood where the author was coming from when she explored disgust; the image of Tori suckling a piglet in the album artwork did elicit a WTF response from me when I first saw it in 1996. Perhaps you need to be smarter than I am to fully appreciate the connections between Tori’s music and the philosophical and sociological treatises mentioned in this book but it came across to me as kinda pretentious (sorry!).

“In the end, Bourdieu’s sociological lens merely neglects what Kant purposely excludes: the body’s role in aesthetic experience.”

I know a lot of people call Tori ‘pretentious’ as well but I just wanted to hear about her songs. I already knew the early Tori biography and had read a lot of the articles referenced. I also didn’t want to keep hearing about Wilson’s book about Céline Dion. I’ve got nothing against Céline (I quite enjoyed her ‘Deadpool 2’ music video) but I was here to read about Tori.

While it wasn’t what I was hoping for this book is definitely thoroughly researched and well written, and I expect a lot of Toriphiles will love it. The sections that actually deconstructed Tori’s songs were interesting and I did learn some new (to me) meanings behind lyrics and background information about the media’s portrayal of her. There were several passages I had to highlight including:

“Process and product are never far apart in Amos’s music, which is, I suspect, one reason why her answers to questions about what the songs mean can often sound like additional lyrics rather than explanations. For Amos, it seems, to sing and play is to think through a complicated problem out loud, and that thinking is never really finished. Neither is the song; neither, perhaps, is the woman.”

I was very disappointed that, in a book about a specific album, some of its songs were barely mentioned, including some of my favourites. In particular, ‘Putting the Damage On’ is mentioned in passing twice and ‘Talula’ is only mentioned once! Songs that aren’t even on this album were given more air time.

This series has been on my radar for a number of years and I expected that after reading about ‘Pele’ I’d be bingeing the rest but it turns out they’re not for me and I’m really bummed about that. I usually have to buy any book written by or about Tori so this is a first for me.

Word of the Book: Abject. Abject and abjection are used a combined 47 times, although it felt closer to 100.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Academic for the opportunity to read this book.

A thoughtful and detailed exploration of music, culture, and a complicated artist. This book worked for me nostalgically and academically.

A fiercely argued, brilliantly incisive take on disgust, gender, and the politics of taste. The discussion of the philosophy of aesthetics can feel a bit tiresome, but the rest of the book is gripping reading, which is an impressive feat for a music book.

The story behind the songs of one of my favourite albums. Another great edition to the series exploring landmark music.

Amy Gentry's comprehensive and insightful look at Tori Amos' music, with her album Boys for Pele as the anchor, was breathtaking. I gobbled it up in two sittings, and wanted more once I reached the end. As a lifelong Amos fan, I loved reading her take on Amos' career, learning new things, and thinking differently about the music, lyrics, and sounds that have been a part of my soul since middle school. I can certainly see myself re-reading this beautiful book many times throughout my life, and that is one of the best compliments I can give!

Explicitly in conversation with Carl Wilson's 33 1/3 about Celine Dion, Amy Gentry*'s entry in the series is, like that earlier book, one of the ones you can profitably read even if you're not a huge fan of the act it's ostensibly about. Addressing an artist often criticised for lacking a filter, Gentry opens in an appropriately confessional vein – "The first time I heard a Tori Amos song I was disgusted. I was an eighth grader with an underdeveloped chest". What follows is in large part an investigation of that disgust – and of our attempt to shield against it with "taste, condom of the soul". A struggle which feels all the more urgent for the fearful penetrability of the body by sound (just think of the way a song you don't like can 'get into your head', be described like a ghastly parasite as an 'earworm'), and worse, the fact that you might even end up liking it after all...and then what does that say about you? The book's chapter titles all riff on Amos' disavowed debut Y Kant Tori Read?, of which a partial defence is mounted; my favourite goes right in for the pun with 'Y Kant Tori Kant?', its discussion of the Königsberg bore's aesthetic theories, alongside those of Burke et al, shedding valuable light on how male-created theories of what matters in art have so often sought to marginalise women as audience, never mind creators. Something which remains the case in Wilson's book, where for all his attempts to examine taste, there remains an unshakable underlying assumption that Elliott Smith is on some intrinsic level superior to Celine Dion**. One of the big themes here is the way that the cultural conversation takes man stuff more seriously than woman stuff, and though I broadly agree, there are times when Gentry weakens her own argument by overplaying it. It is interesting how many champions of other female acts have taken against Amos, and while there's certainly something to the notion that Amos seems to rebel in the 'wrong' way even for them (too twee, too precious, too abstract, simply too much), I don't wholly buy the notion that Amos has been uniquely hard done-to. Gentry rightly criticises press attempts to turn 'Professional Widow' into a diss track/catfight with Courtney Love, but in a sense she's engaged in a similar sort of fannish one-up(wo)manship here; I'm fairly sure fans of Love, surely the alternative scene's Hillary Clinton, would make a strong case that Love has had a tougher ride in terms of genuine hate than the condescension and incomprehension with which Amos has contended. But even beyond that, the likes of Kate Bush and Björk, who here tend to be referenced as more respected, have each suffered an awful lot of mockery over the years. And at the risk of coming over all MRA, you'd never know from this book that male rock stars weren't treated with universal reverence. Whenever Mick Jagger is mentioned, it's as an example of the object of general awe, despite the equally plausible counternarrative which saw him move straight from horny little oik to ridiculous old has-been, decried as a rip-off merchant the whole way. Similarly, when Gentry suggests that pretentious male rock lyricists may be mocked as fey, but never as dim-witted...well, that may be true of the US rock press, but it really doesn't hold in the UK.
(This is not the only example of a slight blind spot for the non-American perspective. The cover line 'Hips. Lips. Tits. Power.' for the Amos/Björk/PJ Harvey piece in Q is taken at face value, rather than being noted as a Silverfish reference, which naturally makes it seem more reductive. Similarly, while 'Professional Widow' is discussed at length, there's not a whisper of the Armand van Helden remix - even though it surely speaks powerfully to the book's angle that Amos' biggest hit single was the result of a man removing most of her words and music. But of course, in the US that was only a club hit, not a hit hit like it was in Europe)

Still, even if Gentry's fascination with Amos can occasionally lead to these slight overstatements, it's worth it. Amos is an act whose fans identify powerfully with her – as confidante, big sister, alter ego – and to have the book written by someone who doesn't share that would feel bloodless and false. You get much more sense of the author from this book than you do from many 33 1/3s, and often it's Gentry talking about the things which bring her close to Amos; from the obvious, like being female, through being generally odd and growing up in a religious family, to the distinctly niche. This was the first time I learned of Amos' jaw ailment, which Gentry shares, and which provides a great lynchpin for discussing the grain of Amos' sound – the way she'll twist or swallow words, the little details which ensure that you can never forget that what you're listening to was made by an organic body existing in a concrete physical space. Gentry contrasts this to "the diamond-hard vocals of Kate Bush, to whom Amos is often compared", which I'm not sure is quite right (you say 'diamond-hard vocals' to me and I think Billy Mackenzie, where Bush is more like a mighty wave), but I can absolutely see what she's getting at. And it's this physicality, this refusal to shy away from the grubby and abject, which put Gentry off Pele at first, in a teenage review to which she keeps returning. With which I can sympathise – I was also, as a fan of the first two albums, somewhat nonplussed by this long and messy new record. In the intervening years, I've come to realise that yes, there's a lot there. And next time I go back to it, it's going to be with a fresh appetite and all sorts of new perspectives. Like its subject, this book is uneven and a bit all over the place, but taken as a whole, well worth it.

*There are still references here and there online, including on Goodreads, to another 33 1/3 on Boys for Pele which was meant to be happening about five years ago, written by Elizabeth Merrick. Maybe some day we can get a 33 1/3 about the stories behind 33 1/3 books and find out what happened there.

**For the record, I'm not really a fan of either. I have a lot of friends who love Smith, but the one time I saw him live I was left entirely unmoved. Whereas Dion...well, the association of her song with a video featuring Kate Winslet, during my phase of peak Winslet fandom-by-association, left its traces. But even before that there was the youth hostel in Verona which always had the same mixtape playing at breakfast, and the only other track I remember was a very soulful live version of Bowie's 'Changes', but there was a Celine Dion song on there too, and one other guest who would always be reduced to floods of tears by it. And even as a snotty teenager, I suspected this was closer to what art is meant to be about than the vague air of disaffected cool fans of eg Fugazi seemed to derive from their own choice of band-I-didn't-get.

(Netgalley ARC. Which, of course, may also mean that some of my quibbles above get addressed between this uncorrected proof and the finished product)

Does exactly what it says on the tin, such a brillo album and a great little companion book to what is possibly the great lady best album.

33⅓ is an on-going series of non-fiction books with each volume centered around a single music album. If you've been in the Tori Amos fandom long enough, you'll know that a book on her third album, Boys For Pele, has been a long-time coming; over a decade, in fact. After postponements, missed deadlines, and the album being back up for grabs, Amy Gentry's proposal landed her the project, with it being slated for release on November 1st. I'd stopped keeping up with the progress on this sometime around 2012/13, but as soon as I saw that ARCs were making the rounds, I was all over it; thank you to the publisher for providing a proof in exchange for an honest review!

Gentry knows how to reel a reader in; the book starts with the sentence "the first time I heard a Tori Amos song, I was disgusted". While providing just enough anecdotes to drive the point home and keep the reader engaged with a personal touch, she proceeds to analyze the record through scholarly ideas such as Kant's philosophy on taste and Kristeva's concept of the abject. Both of these were necessary for the approach to Pele the author went with, but the expositions could've been trimmed down some, and I also could've done without the parallels she kept drawing to another volume in the series, concerning Céline Dion, whom I could not care less about. If you go into this book hoping for a track-by-track break-down of the album, you'll probably be disappointed: The first third of the book wonderfully recounts Tori's projects leading up to Boys For Pele, all necessary to understand her journey of (re)claiming womanhood which led to the album's genesis.

My first reaction to Boys For Pele was similar to the author's; after falling head over heels in love with Little Earthquakes, Boys For Pele was a complete departure, and felt impenetrable to my sixteen year old ears. It was dense and cryptic in a way I couldn't even begin to unpack ("gibberish" would be the less kind description), wrathful and intense in a way I hadn't been exposed to (I could deal with the fierce, male-energy anger of bands like Hole, but this was very different), and just plain inaccessible with its dissonant melodies and often out-of-control vocals. It was unnerving; a new kind of raw, and I dismissed it as inaccessible for years - it sounded like she was undergoing an exorcism, which, in a way, is exactly what the record is about ("it was that feeling of ripping open your vein...", Tori said).

It took years to click, but when I most needed it, the album was there, waiting for me. Nowadays I like to joke that you can't possibly "get" this record until you've listened to it at 2AM while curled up sobbing in the bathtub, choking on the shower spray, but it's really less of a joke and more what literally had to happen for Tori to take my hand and lead me to the edge of the volcano. It almost crosses into progressive rock territory by defying common song structures and playing with unconventional time signatures, and now easily ranks as my third favorite record of hers. I don't think From the Choirgirl Hotel and Scarlet's Walk, which share/swap around for the number one spot, will ever be dislodged, but if I were asked to single out the most important or essential album in her long career, it would be my pick, hands down.

A pianist herself, I really enjoyed reading the author's descriptions of the songs; she even managed to draw my attention to little details I'd never caught on to before, which is quite the feat. Her prose was so beautiful and involved when writing about the song girls that some of the passages truly and honestly knocked my breath out, and I dare say even the most seasoned Tori fan will likely gain a new layer of understanding in one respect or other. I loved the feminist approach she adopted to write about this record (is there really any other way to tackle it though?), while also, and most importantly, daring to ask the sort of questions that get silenced as soon as they are uttered in this fandom: For instance, whether Tori has the right to appropriate the pain of Native and Southern Black Americans in the way she's been known to do throughout her career.

Of the eighteen tracks on Boys For Pele, Gentry goes into stunning in-depth analysis of Blood Roses, Professional Widow, Marianne, Caught a Lite Sneeze, Hey Jupiter, Way Down, and Little Amsterdam, lightly touches on some others, while largely ignoring a good portion of the album, especially the latter half, which, the author admits, doesn't hold many favorites. Muhammad My Friend and Doughnut Song are never even mentioned, and Father Lucifer's, Talula's and Twinkle's passing name-drops are of no account, either. Not having read any of the other books in the 33⅓ series, I don't know if it's common practice to pick and choose songs to focus on rather than delve into the whole album, but the choice baffled me: Boys For Pele, like no other Tori album except for Scarlet's Walk, is a journey - those are the only two of hers that I cannot listen to on shuffle; if I put them on, I have to listen in order, and all the way through. In Pele's case, the journey is the climb out of the belly of the beast, and because of that narrative it should be taken in and considered as a whole. Tori herself said "there is to me, more like novel form on this, chapter to chapter. It is a story. She does descend, she goes to visit Lucifer, she finds the Black Widow, she finds Mr. Zebra and some of the other characters that she takes along with her. It's very Alice In Wonderland, in a sense".

I can't help but feel a little affronted at how Twinkle, especially, was completely ignored. I wouldn't single it out as a favorite song of mine, but in the context of the album, it's crucial: It signifies the hopeful redemption at the end of the narrative, and allows for the final healing and moving on; after all the blood-letting, Pele's raging fire has burnt down and cooled to a distant, twinkling star. I've always loved that imagery, and since I feel that it's a criminally underrated and largely overlooked song, I wish it had gotten the spot-light it deserved.

Despite her impressive and meticulous research work, there were some inaccuracies that jumped out to me; most notably, American Doll Posse is not a double album, and Caught a Lite Sneeze was the first ever single to be offered as a free digital download at the end of 1995, and not an unnamed song in 1998, as Gentry writes.

Overall, when the book got it right, it was incredible, but I can't give it a full five stars because it meandered a little in the early chapters, while the latter half, when Gentry finally started digging into the individual songs, didn't end up giving me the full deconstruction of the album I craved - it just left me wanting more, and if she were to publish an expanded version on the full album, I'd be first in line to buy it. Still, even as it is, I'd go as far as calling it an essential read for any Tori Amos fan, and I look forward to having a physical copy on my shelf. Spoon is thanked in the acknowledgements, so I really hope Tori gets to read this; I can say without the shadow of a doubt that she would love it, and that's really the highest compliment you could wish for.

Thank you NetGalley and Bloomsbury Academic for this ARC.

I've said it before and I apparently have to say it again......
I WANT MORE EMOTION!!!
This is always my problem with the 33 1/3 books, sadly I am completely addicted to them despite knowing I will never get the emotions I want.
I always hope for a love story told through the deconstruction of the album.
Personal emotions and memories mixed in with the reasoning and inspiration behind the songs instead of a dry delivery of other critics thoughts.
The author did include some memories and personal emotion, but they seemed out of place or too badly timed to be relevant.
She starts with recalling her review she wrote for the school paper on this album in the 90's and that was more how I had hoped the rest of the book would have played out.
It just felt dry and got off topic far too much (I'm looking at you entire chapter on the history and development of "taste ).
She delved into most of Tori's library of work, not just Boys for Pele, which was interesting and the reasoning behind some off the songs did have more to them than I knew prior...
I just wanted MORE.

I received an e-copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

If you need to know anything about my music habits, it would be that Tori Amos has been the most important artist for me for the past 17 years, give or take. I started to listen to her music in December 2001, and I have been around for the release of every new album of hers ever since.

Amy Gentry's book is about Boys for Pele, Tori Amos's third record as a solo artist, originally released in 1996. Boys for Pele is a behemoth of an album, clocking in at over 70 minutes and counting 18 tracks. Written in the aftermath of Amos's breakup with her boyfriend of seven years, it is angry, raw and melancholic, concerned with exploring and exorcising demons, both inner and outer ones. It is, arguably, one of Amos's masterpieces*.

There is a lot that can be said about this album. Gentry chooses to examine it through the lens of the Kantian notions of aesthetics and Julia Kristeva's concept of the abject. The latter, in particular, has a considerably apt resonance with regards to this record, which is ugly, difficult and, in parts, unpleasant. (Surprisingly for me, though, Gentry quotes some reviews that described Pele as "precious" and too cutesy / girly. Seriously.)

I found this quote particularly resonant:

<i>Women and girls have a particularly complicated relationship with disgust. We learn at an early age to be grossed out by our bodies, with their ungainly fat deposits and nipples guaranteed to be the wrong size and slimy, bleeding, wrinkly holes. Later on, we learn that the things we like are also disgusting, because we like them. These things include, but are not limited to: unicorns, romance novels, the color pink, Tori Amos.</i>



Gentry's discussion of Boys for Pele is both fascinating and deeply personal, as the author draws on her early experience of listening to the album and dismissing aspects of it in order to appear more sophisticated. What is a little strange for me is that although Gentry analyzes some songs in considerable detail (Blood Roses, Professional Widow, Marianne, Hey Jupiter, Little Amsterdam), a few others are barely mentioned. In fact, there is not even a brief overview of all the tracks in succession. While in other respects I find this book insightful and valuable, it is lacking in this regard; while it has some outstanding tracks, Boys for Pele forms a cohesive whole out of its separate parts.

Still, I recommend this book to fans and non-fans alike: this album and the artist herself definitely merit this kind of thoughtful critical attention.

(* Personally I consider Scarlet's Walk to be on par with Pele)

This book is EVERYTHING. I remember when I somehow luckily stumbled onto Tori Amos as a teenager, and felt like I had joined a secret club. It was secret because we knew what people would say about Tori and her music (it was, after all, the same thing they often said about us): much too much "muchiness." That's probably why, when I spent countless hours playing Boys for Pele (and Little Earthquakes and Under the Pink) over and over again, it really felt like listening to an older, wiser sister letting me in on the *truth* of the universe. As I teenager I couldn't quite figure out how to explain it all , but this book IS that explanation. Song by song, note by note, lyric by lyric, Gentry breaks down both intellectually and emotionally why Amos - and specifically, Boys for Pele - MATTERS so much to so many, and why so many others (including critics) loathe both. My Tori fandom has never burned brighter.

I appreciated the author's criticism and research for this book. Gentry's perspective is interesting and thought provoking.