News: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Concert Review (November 5, 2007)

Jon Gilbertson weighed in on the November 3rd show at the Riverside Theatre for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. His review appears in the November 5th edition of the newspaper but was posted the evening before on their website.

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Amos’ quirks work

At the piano, she’s coy, but she can play

By JON M. GILBERTSON
Special to the Journal Sentinel
Posted: Nov. 4, 2007

Tori Amos hugs her quirks and eccentricities with moist intensity.

That makes her fascinating, especially when she performs live. And especially when she goes particularly conceptual.

Saturday night at the Riverside Theater, Amos skittered onstage in the guise of one of the five female archetypes she created for her most recent album, “American Doll Posse.” In vintage rags and a wig with stringy strands of hair that often concealed her gaze, she gave off vibes of waifish insecurity.

Yet when Amos started playing her magnificent grand piano and singing with a strength that was the opposite of insecurity, she made it clear that music was going to be more important than dress-up games. (She changed into another “Posse” guise later.)

The music was also more important than her technique. Easily as dextrous as Billy Joel or Warren Zevon, she wasn’t afraid to show it but was loath to show off.

She also wasn’t afraid to give time to the instrument’s near-innate prettiness (the shy lullaby “Little Earthquakes”) as well as to its darker rumblings (the smoldering, implosive “Code Red”).

Her backing band – drummer Matt Chamberlain, bassist Jon Evans and guitarist Dan Phelps – were responsive to her many musical and emotional changes.

With that trio’s grounding, Amos could get away with what are perhaps, for her, necessary oddities: her twisty body language at the piano, her manner of phrasing words as if through coyly pursed lips or tightly gritted teeth.

But she usually was able to lighten and brighten that mood: “Big Wheel” was as close as she’s ever likely to get to Jelly Roll Morton; “Winter” framed a detailed father-daughter narrative in a conventionally beautiful ballad; and “Bouncing Off Clouds” moved like a wallflower’s dream of dance-floor grace.

Even at her strangest, Amos was able to convey utter commitment, and the audience embraced her as heatedly as she embraced her strangeness.

The opening act wasn’t quite “normal,” either. This singer-songwriter was named Yoav, and he was as inclined to thump the wood of his acoustic guitar as he was to pick its strings.

But he had the haunted, stark loveliness of a Jeff Buckley or a Rufus Wainwright. So who needs normality?