News: The Scotsman's Concert Review (September 10, 2009)

Appearing in the September 10th edition of The Scotman, David Pollack’s review of the Glasgow concert critiqued the lack of variety in the performance but recognized Tori’s achievement and talent.

Thanks to Mr. Anonymous for sending in the link!

Gig review: Tori Amos

Published Date: 10 September 2009
By David Pollock

TORI AMOS ***
GLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL

IT’S 15 years since second album Under the Pink launched Tori Amos into the upper echelon of piano-playing female singer-songwriters. Since then, the world has witnessed a respectable Kate Bush comeback, the rise of Dresden Dolls’ Amanda Palmer as a poster girl for those of a gothic sensibility, and now the emergent popularity of Florence Welch and her Machine. Amos no longer seems like the figurehead of a once sparsely populated style.

She is, however, a masterful and powerful live act, backed here by a guitarist and drummer. Although there remain Kate Bush-isms in her voice, Amos’s performance defies comparison with almost anyone else out there. Her piano-playing is highly skilled, too, and blessed with a strong theatrical flourish.

Yet in truth, bar a striking crescendo during Pretty Good Year and the wheeling-on of a Hammond organ for Fast Horse and then Precious Things near the end, her performance here might be best described as one-note – though that note is acknowledged to be one of the sharpest, clearest, most spine-tingling notes you’ll ever hear.

There was familiarity in Cornflake Girl and stark, emotive drama in the solo Taxi Ride and Etienne (“maybe I’m a witch”, she sang, to a spike of applause, “running through the fields of Scotland”). But rarely was there variety.