News: Washington Post Concert Review (October 29, 2007)

Washington Post critic Rachel Beckman offers her review of Tori’s show October 26 at the Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. (Try to ignore the fact that the caption writer couldn’t tell Pip from Isabel.) Several of you sent this in, but Alison was the first. Thanks!

Tori Amos didn’t arrive until about 45 minutes into her Friday-night set at DAR Constitution Hall. Instead, we got Isabel, a striking woman wearing a long, platinum blond wig, who slinked up to the piano smoking a cigarette. Isabel is one of Amos’s five personae from her new, high-concept album “American Doll Posse,” and she helped transform the evening into a can’t-look-away spectacle.

She started out with “Yo George,” a short condemnation of President Bush in which she asked, “Is this just the madness of King George?” The recorded version is a mellow, piano-only rumination, but the three-piece band made it furious. After blasting through five songs, Isabel went backstage and transformed back into Tori Amos, who wore a carrot-colored wig and a sequined jumpsuit printed with the American flag. Her first song, “Big Wheel,” the highlight of “American Doll Posse,” was a fun, stomp-and-clap single that verged on country. The 1994 song “Cornflake Girl” was classic Amos, with its distinctive high chorus and vague lyrics: “Never was a cornflake girl/Thought that was a good solution/Hangin’ with the raisin girls.”
Amos, 44, didn’t need theatrics to please her rabid fans, but it felt refreshing to watch a major-label artist fully commit to a concept as bizarre and schizophrenic as the doll posse thing — even if it did little to enhance the music. Still, Amos’s closing song, “Hey Jupiter,” served as a nice reminder of the intense, talented woman at the core of it all.

— Rachel Beckman