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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Scarlet's Walk - A Live Review: Tori Amos at Northrop 10/29/02
Wednesday 04 December @ 11:07:04 |
 by Erin Anderson
Last year’s Strange Little Girls tour marked Tori Amos’ 10-year anniversary as a critically acclaimed cult performer who has gracefully weathered the music biz and somehow emerged a better artist in spite of it. To celebrate, Amos honored her fans by touring with just her piano—which is what she’s always done best, despite a slew of talented band mates and carefully crafted arrangements.
That tour also represented the end of her decade-long contract with Atlantic Records, the label that saw her through the pre-stardom days of her Goth-rock queen Y Kant Tori Read era. Since then, she’s reinvented herself with each of seven LPs as a solo artist (plus one live album), exploring new ways to feature the piano (or harpsichord, Farfisa, Wurlitzer, organ, clavichord, harmonium, Rhodes, etc.) as a rock instrument.
Amos’ live show is ever an extension of her recordings, rather than merely a trip through her albums. Last weekend’s Scarlet’s Walk tour at a packed Northrop Auditorium was another one of these unforgettable strolls. Alongside a few unusually straightforwardly-performed pieces from the new album, released Oct. 29 in the U.S., were a few tracks from 1992’s Little Earthquakes and 1999’s double album To Venus and Back, several of which became recognizable only after about half the song was over. Being a longtime fan of Amos’ music and a seasoned veteran of her live show, this is a trick that always catches me off guard even as I anticipate it (I lean over to a Tori rookie to tell him which song she’s playing, only to discover after a few more bars that I’m way off—not only by a song, but by an entire album).
If the drastically altered tempos, melodies and chord progressions frustrate those who come to hear Amos sing their old favorites, they surely delight as many devoted fans who hang on the edges of their seats to hear what she’ll do next. Touring for the first time ever without longtime guitarist Steve Caton, Amos’ “brothers” onstage included bassist Jon Evans and drummer Matt Chamberlain, both of whom have been with her since 1998’s From the Choirgirl Hotel tour.
Much of Amos’ repertoire relies heavily upon the creamy, dreamy, un-guitarlike guitar playing of Caton, and this missing link between the piano and bass was obvious in songs like “Wednesday” and “Pancake,” both of which rely on a more traditional electric guitar sound. But curiously, throughout most of the set and two encores, the 5-string bass and Amos’ full piano and keyboard parts knit the holes shut quite nicely, and even provided a fresh take on old standards like “Cornflake Girl” (Under the Pink) and “Take to the Sky” (Winter EP), which benefited from a more sparse arrangement.
Amos seems to be currently into rendering several of the electronically-influenced songs from Venus and Back and Choirgirl Hotel as live instrument pieces, and the insertion of these songs into the set provided a curious, experimental assist for her to slam home straight-up thunderous piano dazzlers like “Josephine” and “Spring Haze” (both from Venus as well).
A particular highlight was Amos’ rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat,” an already painfully beautiful song that her unique phrasing crafts into a positively heartbreaking classical piano piece. It’s ultimately this subtle phrasing that sets Amos apart as a performer not only from other artists, but also from herself in her own recordings. It’s obvious that Amos’ songs continue to speak to her in different ways with each tour, which is undoubtedly why she still packs auditoriums after seven albums, 11 years, and countless performances.
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