News: The Independent's London Concert Review (July 3, 2007)

The Independent reviewed Tori’s first concert at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, giving it a mixed review with 3 of 5 stars. The reviewer seems to have gotten the dolls a little confused though as he is clearly writing about the first show but identifies the opener as Isabel instead of Santa. Jump the flip for the review.

Thanks to Bob for the link!

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Tori Amos, Carling Apollo Hammersmith, London
New roles for the cornflake girl
3 stars of 5

Reviewed by James McNair
Published: 05 July 2007

These days, Tori Amos tours with a rather personalised support act: herself in character as one of the five different female personae she adopts on her latest album American Doll Posse. Tonight she takes the stage as the highly politicised photographer Isabel, a woman whose look incorporates a platinum-blonde bob and a cream dress that’s deliberately backlit to become transparent.

Initially at least, politics seems to be on the back-burner, Isabel/Tori flirting her way through the earthy stomp of “Body and Soul”, then dropping into the early crowd-pleaser “God”, one of several songs in the set from 1994’s Under The Pink. The live sound is crystal-clear and the elaborate lighting suggests that Amos remains flush, despite these days selling fewer records than she did in the 1990s.

Further in we get hits such as “Crucify” and “Cornflake Girl”, Amos her most animated self again. She’s wearing a long red wig and a sparkly gold jumpsuit that conjures Ziggy-Stardust-era Bowie – fitting given that his glam-era work is one of American Doll Posse’s many touchstones.

Like many able musicians, Amos likes to showboat. Her habit of standing, legs akimbo, while simultaneously playing two keyboards that bookend her is tonight enlivened by the kind of slow bump-’*’- grind dancing that really shouldn’t be seen outside an over-40s tantric yoga class. You wouldn’t want Tori for an auntie at your wedding, but you have to admire her lack of inhibition.

There was time a time when everything that she played live seemed exasperatingly mid-tempo, the expert grooves fashioned by her bassist Jon Evans and drummer Matt Chamberlain more the stuff of maths than the essence of soul. It is pleasing, then, that new song “Big Wheel” is playful and propulsive, the fab section in which Amos counts off Chamberlain’s drumbeats probably the closest she will ever come to being James Brown.

It’s also within “Big Wheel” that Amos casts herself as a milf. (it’s a porn term – Google it with caution). When she reaches the relevant couplet it generates a huge cheer, her fans appreciative of the fact that Amos has become no less controversial with age.

Certain songs, though, require a more demure and meditative deportment if their refined poetry is to ring true. The quite magical “Bells For Her”, more spell than song, is one such.

Elsewhere, the recent recruitment of guitarist Dan Phelps pays dividends on the raunchy, up-tempo waltz that is “You Can Bring Your Dog”. For years, Amos resisted the electric guitar’s sonic ubiquity, but its crunchier textures are actually a welcome side-dish. Still as Phelps chops away, there’s no mistaking who the star of the show is, Amos’s vocal and piano riding just a little higher in the mix than a more democratic, “proper” band set-up might allow, and her supporting musicians stationed well outside of her spotlight.

Towards the end, her backing band leaves the stage and the words “Tori & Bö” are projected on a curtained backdrop. It takes a few seconds for us to process that this signals a series of “duets” between Amos and her beloved Bösendorfer grand piano, these including “Cool On Your Island”, the beautiful ballad that she recorded with her pre-solo career band Y Kant Tori Read some 20 years ago, and “China”, a song from her solo debut Little Earthquakes that uses a flight from the Orient to New York City as a metaphor for the growing distance between a troubled couple in a floundering relationship.

The most involving solo piano and vocal moment, though, comes when Amos points out that we are witnessing her play on the eve of American Independence Day, then sings a seemingly spontaneous tirade against George W Bush and his administration that is much more graphic and forthright than American Doll Posse’s “Yo George.” If the evening’s razzle-dazzle had obscured her latest album’s hard-hitting subtext, this was her way of bringing it back to the fore.