Thrill 4-16: Low down and havin' fun {Hoochie Woman}

When I started this series of posts on Tori Amos' new album, The Beekeeper, it was supposed to be about first impressions.

That sounds faintly ridiculous after five months, but I can still recall some things from my first hearings of these songs. I certainly remember hearing Hoochie Woman for the first time, because it was the third track that I previewed and the first one that I actually liked straight away.

Why? Because it's fun, dammit. I can't think of a track on any Tori album that is this fun since Happy Phantom way back in 1992. Hoochie Woman has handclaps. Need I say more?

Well, yes, I do need to. As much as I was delighted by this song initially, on its own it isn't much more than a catchy groove, and the novelty does tend to wear off a bit if it's listened to too often. It's the context it appears in that makes it work so well.

I was extremely pleased to find out a few years ago that Tori understood the significance of song order to how individual songs will sound. As human beings, most of our senses and perceptions are relative - we are not very good at judging speed for example, but excellent at telling if we are accelerating or slowing down. We can tell whether two things are similar or different with respect to a particular attribute.

Tori spoke of song order as being analogous to hanging pictures on the walls of a gallery - you have to work out which pieces will enhance each other by appearing alongside. She understood that the effect of having Real Men at the end of the Strange Little Girls album, as a summation, was infinitely preferable to the original intention of making it the opening statement.

She also quite clearly understood the effect of following the unusually high vocals of Martha's Foolish Ginger with the unusually low vocals of Hoochie Woman. Try playing the latter immediately after Witness instead and you'll comprehend the huge difference that song order makes.

That, dear reader, is one of the chief reasons why Tori Amos makes some of the best albums in the business.