News: Denver Post Concert Review (November 29, 2007)

The Denver Post appears not to have published a review of Tori’s show at the Wells Fargo Theatre, but Ricardo Baca’s thoughts on the evening were posted on Reverb, the Post’s music blog. While Baca became a fan at track 8, it sounds like he probably would have preferred a shorter set that evening. The post also includes some nice photography by Laurie Scavo. Thanks to Kimberly for the link!

Tori Amos @ the Wells Fargo Theater

by Ricardo Baca on November 29, 2007

It’s a bad sign when an artist leaves the stage after a first encore and you find your head tilting all the way back, as if to address the house lights and beg them to please, please, please come on, thus signaling the end of the show.

And there I was at the Wells Fargo Theater on Wednesday night, head cocked back 90 degrees willing the lights to come on after Tori Amos’ first encore … to no avail. The lights remained off, and a small swell of appreciative applause rose from the emptying crowd around me, signaling at least on more encore…

Mind you, I love Tori Amos. Seriously, the first four records on her discography helped shape my weird adolescence as much as R.E.M., New Order and Nine Inch Nails. She’s an amazing talent, and there have been songs on her last five records that have connected with me on an intimate level, and even if they’ve become few and far between, I still go to her shows.

And that makes it doubly disappointing to see such a boring, lackluster, stinted, tepid Tori Amos show. Wednesday’s show was my seventh or eighth time seeing her, and it was the first one where I could have happily left before the house lights came up. But I didn’t leave early. I stayed till the bitter end, an encore of “Tear in Your Hand” – a beautiful song, from her early career, even, but hardly a memorable closer.

The concert started out hotly. Amos hit the stage in a wig and a red mini-dress looking the part of a flapper, and she threw down solid versions of new songs “Big Wheel,” “You Can Bring Your Dog” and “Secret Spell” while sneaking in “Cornflake Girl,” “Pretty Good Year,” “She’s Your Cocaine” and other older tunes.

Playing off the multiple personas of her latest record, “American Doll Posse,” Amos was riffing off the crowd more than she normally does, grabbing herself provocatively amid mid-song breaks and moments of between-song storytelling. She’s a sensuous woman and an occasionally outlandish performer, but this was more than usual, perhaps because of the whole character role-playing, perhaps not.

The setlist for the first half of the show was exciting. She played an experimental “Sugar” that polarized the audience, and her “Pretty Good Year” was expectedly good. But the late-set lull she hit had many in the audience either leaving or falling asleep in their seats. It was an unfortunate string of mostly down-tempo songs mixed with some of her less successful songwriting outings – including the new “Your Cloud” – and it was difficult to keep focused on the stage.

As great as Amos can be, she can also be tortuous. And even with a riveting “Precious Things” anchoring the first encore, it wasn’t enough to pull her the audience out of its slumber. Setlist construction is an art when you’re an artist with the back catalog the size of Amos’, and she’s normally a master at constructing an arc that will introduce the audience to her new material and remind them of older album tracks while at the same time keeping them excited with the familiar material they know the words to.

But she failed this time around.

Somebody mentioned on the way out of the theater following her second encore that Amos had lost her edge. And while that’s partly true, she’s also the same crazy performer we all fell in love with in the “Little Earthquake” and “Under the Pink” days. Amos is still exciting to watch, but is she still thrilling to listen to?