Brandon's Buzz

Tori Amos — “The Waitress” (from Under the Pink) —

Amos is eternally at her best when she is chronicling those with their noses pressed to the glass — outsiders looking in — and keenly surveying the universality of the pain associated with such a status. The story here — one server in a slapdash greasy spoon envies another for her seemingly effortless charm and cheery ways — is tightly observed, simple but hardly threadbare, and Tori scores one for all the average girls who, no matter the milieu, have had their sack lunches eaten time and again by the pretty bitch on the block.