After a four-decade career, a long run of demanding yet widely embraced albums, and more than a few genuine hits, Tori Amos could easily lean on her legacy and play the nostalgia card, but is just not who she is as a performer and artist. Even though this tour ostensibly supports her forthcoming record In Times Of Dragons, the set draws only sparingly from that material. Instead, she turns inward, digging deep into her catalogue and pulling out songs that are neither obvious choices nor predictable crowd-pleasers.
The stripped-back band features drummer Earl Harvin, bassist and arranger Jon Evans, and a trio of backing vocalists nicknamed The Angels (Liv Gibson, Deni Hlavinka and Hadley Kennary) who add texture and depth to the arrangements. Some of the most striking moments come when those voices intertwine, creating dense, almost choral harmonies.
The new arrangements are quite radical, yet the songs remain unmistakable. Much like Bob Dylan reworking his own catalogue, she does not so much rewrite the tunes as strip them back to their core, extracting their essence and laying their truths bare. Numbers like "Bachelorette" (played here for the first time in over a decade), "Winter" and the hit "Crucify" were given new, angular guises that revealed new layers to their emotional structures. Among the evening’s highlights were also a series of extended instrumental introductions, where Amos stepped beyond the roles of songwriter, singer, and pianist to operate as part of the ensemble, listening, responding, and shaping the music in real time alongside the bass and drums, playing.
There is tension running through the set, a sense of unease, even dread, as the featured new song "Shush" reads clearly as a commentary for the current state of the world and the rise of a corrosive strain in global politics, one that has taken a particularly visible form in the United States. It is also a frightful allegory on the feminine condition. That Amos is able to shape that material into something that still offers moments of beauty, and ultimately a form of release, remains central to what she does. It is her gift to us.
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