Tori Amos in her studio

This February Tori Amos will unveil two exciting projects -- a new CD entitled The Beekeeper (in stores February 22) and her first book, Tori Amos: Piece by Piece, co-written with journalist Ann Powers.

Currently, Tori is putting the finishing touches on The Beekeeper, which she's recording and self-producing in her UK studio Martian Engineering. On songs like "Sweet the Sting," "Sleeps with Butterflies," and "Ribbons Undone," Tori incorporates vintage organs, Afro-Cuban drums and Gospel choirs, working once again with longtime partners, drummer Matt Chamberlain and bassist Jon Evans.

"The Beekeeper is musically inspired by the fact that the piano has realized that she has an organ - with my right hand on her organ and my left hand on her piano keys, I have been changed by the relationship between these two beautiful creatures, the Bosendorfer piano and the B3 Hammond organ."

In the book Tori Amos: Piece by Piece co-penned with writer Ann Powers, the usually private Tori gives a rare inside look into many intimacies of her life as both a private individual and a very public performing musician. The book, published by Broadway Books (a division of Random House), will be released on February 8th. On Thursday, February 24, Tori and Ann will make a special appearance at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.

Enjoy!

No, I didn’t take this picture...

Good lord, the PJ Harvey concert was more than two weeks ago and I haven’t even been on here to tell ya about it! So, I’ll tell you about it...

It fuckin’ rocked!

I swear, I know a few bands who could afford to take a some rock lessons from Miss Polly, she really knows how to get the job done. The concert was at the Wiltern LG in Los Angeles. I’d never been there before, but luckily my friend Francesca lives a few miles away so she knew where to go. I’m also glad she likes Indie Rock and PJ, because I seriously didn’t have anyone else to go with! But anyway, the Wiltern is beautiful. It’s an old theatre with this carved wooden sun thing on the ceiling... it was quite majestic. I really felt like I was going to a show and not just another concert. And it really was a show!

I don’t know who the opening act was, but, man, was he a trip! He came out with his acoustic guitar singing and playing all by himself. He was pretty Indie with some experimental stuff thrown in. It was strange because he’d start off well, some cool guitar arrangement, and then all of a sudden he’d change chords and do some weird interlude and it just threw off the whole song. I couldn’t really take him seriously because he was just so strange! Francesca was laughing the whole time. Then this other guy named Josh (who we later learned was Polly’s lead guitarist/back-up drummer) came out and played drums for him. Those songs were pretty cool, I gotta admit, but I was watching Josh the drummer the whole time! He was cute!

So then Polly came out and we almost literally had our asses handed to us. She was incredible! Poor thing was having audio problems or something because she kept messing with the amps and pedals. She opened with “Cat On The Wall”, which I had on here for awhile. I was going to try and remember the songs she did but because I didn’t write them down I don’t remember all of them. But let me see... these aren’t in order, by the way... Shame, The Letter, A Perfect Day Elise (Polly on guitar), The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore, Victory, Who the Fuck (everyone was singing), Water... ah, I don’t remember. I knew all but two songs. She played guitar a few of the songs, but the rest of the time she was dancing around and making love to the audience. She’s a quirky little thing on stage! For one song, I wish I could remember which one it was, Josh was on one drum set and her main drummer was on another set... you should have heard how amazing that sounded! They played the same thing for most of the song, and I was amazed at how well-synced they were. I was so impressed at how good her vocals sounded. She’s a seasoned professional. She can scream at the the top of her lungs and still sound beautiful. The break before her encore lasted forever! It was driving me nuts! Everyone kept cheering and clapping but I could tell they were getting a little tired of screaming. So, finally she came back out and did a five or six song encore – it was more of a second act, but hey, the more songs the better, right? If I remember right, Water was her final song. I didn’t want her to go away!

So, if you ever get the opportunity to see Polly live, go see her. Seriously. You won’t regret it, but you might regret passing up the chance...!

Oh, and I swear I'll have some new PJ songs on here by the weekend! :)

Sarah Slean

Sarah Slean's new album Day One came out last Tuesday, September 28th.  It features Toronto's Kurt Swinghammer on guitar for about half the tracks on the album along with Howie Beck who is also from Toronto and Ian D'Sa (Billy Talent guitarist).  The album was produced by Pete Prilsnek (Sarah Harmer) and Dan Kurtz (The New Deal).  The song Day One is currently being featured on her website along with several others off of her older albums.

Tegan and Sara came out with a new album on Tuesday, September 14th called So Jealous which seems to be doing really well here in Canada.  So Jealous was produced by John Collins, David Carswell, Howard Redekopp along with themselves.  Tracks from the album and others are currently being featured on their website.

Po' Girl's Allison Russell

Po' Girl finally released a new album called Vagabond Lullabies which features great talent like Rae Spoon and Carolyn Mark. You can hear 1 minutes samples on their website with lyrics. I haven't found the funds to go buy it yet unfortunately. Although I heard a majority of the tracks from their show I went to in August and I can tell you it's well worth the money if you're into folk. The singers in this group have talented voices. I get goosebumps everytime I hear Allison Russell's voice. Just everyone in the group is so talented.

Anyway, once Kristy and I can meet online, she'll be sending me Patti Smith music so Patti can be our next feature artist. We're all very excited to get her up here.

I've got an idea: I think it would be very cool if we could give you guys the chance to get involved with this blog. First, I don't really have the time to search for music news, so if any of you have any music information, don't hesitate to email me though the contact form to submit any info or ramblings about music and everything related. And if you've been inspired to go and buy any of the albums that we feature or talk about, let us know! We wanna know what you have to say!

Also, the two random music files that I feature on this blog are from my own personal collection, so it's rather limited because I can't afford to buy all the music that I want - art supplies for school are taking their toll on my wallet. Many of you have suggested artists in thesuggestion box suggestion box, but I can't feature them because I don't have their music! So if you have any music files that you'd like to submit, contact me and we'll get you set up so we can get your music on here! Wouldn't that be fun? I think so!

Take care and rock on, and be on the lookout for Patti Smith!

-allie

Anyway, during my search for music news, I stumbled upon a website called Indie911. It’s a website that promotes Indie artists and allows artists to promote themselves by making updates or something. I’m not quite sure how it all works because I just discovered it like 30 minutes ago, but the time I did spend looking around the site was well worth it. There are a ton of artists on there with music samples and website links and a way to leave comments for the particular artists. So if you’re looking for new music, Indie911 is definitely a place to look!

Have fun!

Edit:  I also thought I'd share this link to ZeD because it's basically the same thing only it includes all forms of art, not just music.  I suggest you take a look.  Especially if you're interested in becoming a fellow ZeDdite, I suggest you join and upload your work to the site where you'll gain a lot of attention!  You might possibly be featured in ZeD's weekly newsletter or even on ZeDtv which airs on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) every weeknight.

-wailfulrhyme