The February 2005 issue of Rag Magazine, which is based in Florida, reviewed The Beekeeper. Click to read the review.

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Thanks to Melissa for sending me the review. You can find this issue online as a PDF file at ragmagazine.com, or you can read the album review below:

Tori Amos
The Beekeeper
Epic

With stories of mustard seeds, cinnabar juice, pirates, honey, ribbons and original sin (um, make that sinsuality), the red vixen, Tori Amos, invites us to indulge in the shake-shake-shake and sultry shimmy of her sweet sting on this 19-track release. Vintage organs, Afro-Cuban drums and the London Community Gospel Choir join Amos and her boys (Matt Chamberlain: drums, Jon Evans: bass).

Most of these songs flutter with the airy lightness of butterfly wings, but Amos has not lost touch with reality; terms like terrorist, vegetarian, office girls and Barneys now freely swim in her lyric pool. Amos also continues her unofficial mission to set the religious records straight: "She is Risen," she affirms on "Barons of Suburbia," and "Original Sin? I don't think so," she attests with "Original Sinsuality."

Famous beaus have often been her vocal partners; previously Trent Reznor and Maynard James Keenan. The Beekeeper entertains Damien Rice for a blissful track about the power of orange knickers. Rice and Amos calmly ask, "Can somebody tell me now, who is this terrorist?"

For the most part, Amos has chosen grace over her sometimes radical approach to topics. Her growth has never been more apparent. The woman who once sang spiteful tales of being a waitress, now sings about driving in her Saab to Ireland. We get the same balmy-days-of-sweet-sangria tones from Scarlet's Walk with this record. And like Scarlet's, the Bee remembers past loves, addictions and cowboys. The final track, "Toast," says adieu with much of the same somber eloquence that "Gold Dust" did. Strangely, it could almost be an epilogue to Rice's "Cheer's Darlin'." "With a toast he's telling me it's time/ To let you go/ let you go," she states, and coolly exits.

- Monica Cady