[6] Boys for Pele was recorded in rural Ireland and Louisiana and features 18 songs that incorporate harpsichord, clavichord, harmonium, gospel choirs, brass bands and full orchestras.

For Amos, the album was a step into a different direction, in terms of singing, songwriting, and recording, and is experimental in comparison to her previous work.

[7][8][9] During the recording of her previous album, Under the Pink (1994), Amos's longtime professional and romantic relationship with Eric Rosse, who co-produced a considerable amount of her pre-Pele work, disintegrated.

"[10] During this time, Amos, who has openly discussed her experiences with psychedelic drugs, particularly in relation to Boys for Pele, did ceremonies with a South American shaman and experienced meeting the devil, leading her to write the track "Father Lucifer.

[15] The vinyl release is the only version of the album in which the interludes ("Beauty Queen", "Mr. Zebra", "Way Down", and "Agent Orange") are not numbered.

"[10] Two underlying currents run through Boys for Pele: exploring the role of women in both patriarchal religion and relationships.

Amos had previously written songs in a religious and/or theological context ("Crucify" from Little Earthquakes (1992), "God" from Under the Pink), but her viewpoint takes a particularly feminist slant on this album.

Amos derived the album's title from the Hawaiian volcano goddess, Pele, with the "boys" representing the men in her life.

"First I wanted to sacrifice all these guys to the volcano goddess and roast them like marshmallows, then I decided they gave me a really wonderful gift,"[11] Amos said of the title.

"Blood Roses", which Amos had initially intended to serve as the opening track to the album, finds the singer scorned over a failed relationship, belting out lines such as, "can't forget the things you never said" and "I've shaved every place where you've been boy".

[20] Given her religious upbringing, Amos was drawn to record in a church, not in anger, but "with the intention of wholeness and of bringing a fragmented woman back to freedom.

Three such songs, "Cooling", "Never Seen Blue" and "Beulah Land", were recorded for inclusion on Boys for Pele, but were kept off the album, later released as B-sides on the "Spark" (1998) and "Jackie's Strength" (1998) singles.

Other songs were partially written during the Boys for Pele era and finished and released later: "Snow Cherries from France" appears on the Tales of a Librarian (2003) compilation, her final release with Atlantic; "Apollo's Frock" appears on Scarlet's Hidden Treasures (2004); and "Walk to Dublin", which was left off the album after disagreements over the musical structure of the song between Amos and her label, then revisited again during the From the Choirgirl Hotel (1998) recording sessions, was not released until A Piano: The Collection (2006).

The album's cover is a photo of Amos holding a large rifle, sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of an old wooden building.

[24] In late 1995, Atlantic released a promotional-only CD in Germany and America simply titled Tori Amos, under catalog number PRCD-6535-2.

Boys for Pele is more lyrically dense than Amos's two previous albums, taking poetic obscurity to new heights.

[16] Robert Christgau of The Village Voice assigned the album a "dud" rating, indicating "a bad record whose details rarely merit further thought.

"[42] One reviewer observed that Amos' unfettered creativity due to serving as her own producer cost the album its accessibility.

This included mockery of Amos' performance style for being overly sexualized, and criticisms of the supposed lesbian subtext in the album's lyrics.

Despite receiving mixed reviews upon its release, Boys for Pele has gone on to become a strong-selling album and to be cited as having been critically underrated.

The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 102,000 copies in its first week, going on to achieve RIAA Gold certification in the US by early March.

[62] Record Collector magazine praised the reissue, stating that the bonus material "will be difficult for fans to resist".