I have added 6 more reviews of The Beekeeper from various U.K. newspapers and publications to the Dent. The reviews are from the following publications:

• The Daily Mirror
  
• The Sun
  
• The Daily Telegraph
  
• Scotland On Sunday
  
• The Times (U.K.)
  
• What's On: The Definitive Listings Guide for Birmingham and Central England
  

Click to read all these reviews!

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Here are 6 reviews of The Beekeeper from various U.K. publications:

The Daily Mirror
February 18, 2005

Read online at www.mirror.co.uk or below:


Thanks to Emma and Andy and BarbaraKirk for sending me the review.

TORI AMOS - The Beekeeper Rating 3/5

She arrived in Britain in the early '90s and quickly put a claim on the challenging female role soon to be vacated by Kate Bush. And this bizarre sprawling album arrives a few months before the first Bush album in 12 years is due. So, is it time for Tori to pack up and go home?

Hardly. Her career has been suitably bold and courageous, encompassing harrowing rape songs, radical cover versions, miscarriages, marriage and an album photoshoot where she suckled a lamb. She has made ambitious concept albums and duetted with Tom Jones and Robert Plant, and lived to tell the tale.

Tori's well-defined attention-seeking impulse served her well. With 12 million worldwide sales, her claim on the Kooky Queen throne is assured. She records in a studio built alongside the Cornwall home where she has found domestic contentment with her son and record producer husband.

The Beekeeper is an eccentric album, a one-of-a-kind blend of soul and gospel flavours, classical flourishes, schoolgirl poetry, flights of choirgirl fancy and toe-curling confessionals.

Although a classy musician with an unmistakable groove and defined touch, there are times when Tori's titles - The Power Of Orange Knickers, Sinsuality - signal she has crossed the line between fearless warrior woman into hysterically over-the-top poser.

With 19 tracks, this single CD is a marathon. That makes it perfect for hardcore fans that will savour every gasp and falsetto shriek.

The warm sound is a tribute to her musicianship and the virtues of home recording. However, the uncommitted listener, unable to devote hours to figuring out what Tori's singing about, may find it an endurance test.

The Sun
February 18, 2005

This is bascially a tabloid but I wanted to still share the review!

Thanks to Erin French and Joseto Solis for sending me the review.

Keeper Of The Keys

Tori Amos
The Beekeeper
3 out of 5 Stars

Coldplay and Keane have finally made the piano cool, reckons Tori Amos.

The American singer-songwriter feels those two groups have paved the way for new bands to tinkle the ivories.

Tori, who releases her latest album The Beekeeper on Monday, says: "It's fantastic what Coldplay and Keane have done for the piano. It took me a while to get noticed. People told me the piano was never going to happen."

How wrong they were. The Beekeeper is Tori's ninth album in a career that includes worldwide record sales topping 12 million and multiple Grammy nominations.

Since she moved to Cornwall in 1997, Tori says she has become even more creative.

The Maryland-born singer says: "I've been so influenced by my village's locals and there really is something special about that part of the country." Tori's latest album is a 19-track escape into her dreamy world.

Sleeps with Butterflies is a sheer epic while General Joy is haunting and exquisite. There are misses too -- like the jazz-tinged Barons of Suburbia, Cars and Guitars and the full-on preachathon of Witness.

The highlight is her collaboration with Irish folkie Damien Rice on the bizarrely-titled The Power of Orange Knickers.

Tori says: "It just had to be sung by a man like Damien.

"It was one of those days where you're just happy to meet somebody you admire and hope they're like you want them to be.

"And he was perfect."

What's On: The Definitive Listings Guide for Birmingham and Central England
The February 12-15, 2005 issue

Thanks to James Weddup for sending me the review.

"Married life in Cornwall and a child certainly seems to suit Tori; while opener Parasol seems to point towards earlier albums, the bulk of there 19 tracks show a mellower, funkier singer - with a glint in her eye and a mischievous streak in her blood.

Few others could duet with Damien Rice on a song called The Power of Orange Knickers and get away with it; Jamaica Inn is bright and breezy, General Joy is a glimpse of return back to form; Original Sinsuality the finest Kate Bush-esque song she's written for years.

Sadly it's just that bit too long - five tracks fewer and the great stuff that is here wouldn't be so obscured - but no less obscure.

Still treading her own path, her ranks for fans (who put the fan back into fanatic) will love it, but it's unlikely to bring in many new converts"

The Daily Telegraph
February 19, 2005

Thanks to Emma and Andy for sending me the review.

No longer the screaming banshee of old, these days Tori Amos makes music that reflects a new kind of contentment. Her latest album is a daunting collection of 19 songs which Amos, always an enthusiastic thematiser, has divided into their own separate little "gardens". There are hints of betrayal on songs such as her ode (with Damien Rice as co-vocalist) to The Power of Orange Knickers, there's an exquisite hymn to her young daughter (Ribbons Undone), there's a dramatic narrative inspired by her Cornish home (Jamaica Inn), and there' s even, on the title track, a looming sense of menace, but nowhere does she return to the hollering and ululating of albums such as From the Choirgirl Hotel. Her rhythms, once changeable and lurchy, now follow a steadier pulse, while her discovery of the Hammond B3 organ adds depth and texture.

So the pleasures of her music are subtler; her garden is a place of secret corners and gentle, dappled colours. It takes a while to get to know it, but it's time well spent, because this is a very rich and very beautiful piece of work.

David Cheal

Scotland On Sunday
February 13, 2005

You can read this online at news.scotsman.com or below:


Thanks to Peter Hockett for sending me the review.

CD of the week
By COLIN SOMERVILLE

TORI AMOS
The Beekeeper
Epic 5194252, 12.99

NINE albums on, the Queen Of Kookiness produces a career bookend for 1992's Little Earthquakes, less mad, more mature, but still pushing that musical and lyrical envelope. Only Amos could theme an album on the shamanic qualities of the humble beekeeper, and populate it with people such as 'Mother Revolution' and concepts such as 'Original Sinsuality'.

For the first time, and this is her innuendo not mine, Amos has fully embraced the organ to complement her trademark piano stylings.

Her Hammond provides a lush carpet for those smooth vocal gymnastics, and occasional near-sexual workouts on the other keyboard. These are less frequent and subsequently have greater impact, with The Beekeeper generally a measured and mellow beast.

Opening with the typically oblique 'Parasol', we unexpectedly find ourselves in Fairport Convention territory, subsequently visiting 'Jamaica Inn', and a bizarre road trip to Ireland which weirdly sounds like Amos at the wheel with a selection of Corrs and Enyas in the back seat. Living in Devon can have that effect on a lady.

We get funky, jazzy, bluesy, Kate Bushy, and for old fans of 'Cornflake Girl', get stuck into the lovely 'Martha's Foolish Ginger' or the inexplicably catchy duet with Damon Rice, 'The Power Of Orange Knickers'.

There is nothing here as thrillingly disturbing as 'God', but an older, wiser Amos can instead serve up a compelling slab of voodoo boogie blues with 'Hoochie Woman', which is equally satisfying if you are that way inclined.

The Times (U.K.)
February 19, 2005

You can read it online at entertainment.timesonline.co.uk or below:


Thanks to Peter Hockett for sending me the review.

Tori Amos
The Beekeeper (Epic)

Tori Amos has always been rather trying. Whether because of her image as the self-styled flame-haired pixie of angst, or her earnestness (her "best-of" collection was called, teeth-gnashingly, Tales of a Librarian), she seems to appeal to a very particular demographic: one that still wears "Meat is Murder" T-shirts and shoes made from organic lavender. Her music was once faintly alluring, with both Little Earthquakes (1992) and Under the Pink (1994) providing a modicum of interest. But it has been many years since she's made a half-decent record, the nadir coming with Strange Little Girls (2001), a facile, cloying covers album that came a decade too late to help US troops flush out General Noriega from Panama.

So, it comes as something of a surprise to be able to tell you that The Beekeeper is quite good. Indeed, it's not until tracks 12 and 13, Original Sinsuality (the clue to its awfulness is in the title) and Ireland ("Driving in my Saab, on my way to Eye-ER-land") that a murderous rage descends upon the rational listener, thereby undoing the excellent work of the preceding 11 tracks and three of the following six.

The Beekeeper owes its partial success to Amos's new willingness to avoid tooth-rotting whimsy and, although it is ostensibly another concept album (something to do with emotional journeys and gardens, apparently), keeping track of its loose narrative will likely distract your attention from the first half's tender melodies.

The best of these come in an early run with Sweet the Sting (a Santana- esque swagger replete with swoonsome chorus line), The Power of Orange Knickers (an off-kilter study of desire that manages to overpower its worrisome imagery -- wouldn't the pants clash with her hair?) and Jamaica Inn, which is four minutes of lovelorn beauty and probably not only this album's highlight but Amos's career creative peak. Of course, over 19 tracks the quality is bound to fluctuate and it does, sometimes alarmingly so, but if you use the skip button wisely and ignore the conceptual aspect, there is much to enjoy here.

By Paul Connolly