Last night I had the pleasure of going to see eight-time Grammy nominee Tori Amos. In the interest of full disclosure, I feel it’s necessary for me to admit that prior to her Perth performance, I knew very little about Tori Amos apart from the classic ‘Cornflake Girl’. Amos’ first solo album ‘Little Earthquakes’ came into existence only a few short months before I did. She’s since released another 13 studio albums and has a very diverse following, but somehow, Tori Amos and I have been passing ships in the night up until this point.
This being the case, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I attended the Perth performance of Amos’ ‘Unrepentant Geraldines’ tour. Given that she’s often placed in the category of ‘Emotionally Intense Female Singers that Came Out of the 1990s’ alongside Fiona Apple and PJ Harvey, I suspected that she might be my jam. I was not wrong.
Stylistically, Amos has little in common with Apple and Harvey, but shares a tendency for raw, honest lyrics, and isn’t afraid to explore topics like sexuality, feminism, religion, assault and abuse.
The internet has since informed me that her exploration of these topics has given her music a reputation of appealing primarily to women, a statement which, gathering from the diversity of last night’s concert-goers, appears to be baseless.
Amos has a large LGBT following, and she filled Perth’s Convention Centre with a mix of married couples, families with older children, and fans representing every age and point on the gender spectrum.
One thing Amos’ fans share is that they are the most well-behaved crowd I have ever seen. They cheer after every song, but as soon as the first note of the next number hits the air they simultaneously fall into a reverential silence. It’s faintly eerie.
Sometimes, when they could presumably no longer contain their gratitude, statements of thanks would explode out of them after certain songs, but that was about as out of hand as it got. Even during the support act, the soulful singer/guitarist Matt Walters, everyone sat to listen in polite silence. At one point, the world’s kindest heckler yelled ‘That was great!’ but apart from that, nary a word was spoken.
Amos went through a 20-song repertoire of work from across her decades-spanning career. She included some of her early numbers: ‘Little Earthquake’, ‘Precious Things’ and ‘Silent All These Years’ as well as ‘Oysters’ from her 2014 album ‘Unrepentant Geraldines’.
Amos worked through an hour and a half of music without pausing to take a breath, spinning on her stool between a grand piano and a keyboard, occasionally playing with one hand on each. How many human beings can claim the ability to play two instruments at once while singing?
Taking to the stage in heels and a dramatic red satin jacket that fell almost to the floor, Amos looked like a tiny sorceress. She sounded like one too. Her classical training is evident in her extraordinary vocal range, and she goes from a belted high note to a growl or breathy whisper without so much as a pause for breath.
Her occasional whispering of lyrics gave off the intimacy of a mother singing a small child to sleep, both from the song itself and enraptured silence of the adoring crowd.
Amos herself spoke about three sentences during the entire show. Once to greet the audience, once to say goodbye, and once to introduce the covers section of the show: what Amos calls ‘The Lizard Lounge’. ‘You requested this song, you know who you are,’ she said, before launching into a haunting rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘I’m On Fire’, followed by Elton John’s ‘Someone Saved My Life Tonight’.
A Tori Amos concert is undoubtedly a special experience. It is not difficult to see why she still draws a crowd with fourteen albums under her belt. She kept the entire Convention Centre in a state of hypnosis until her encore of ‘Cornflake Girl’, ’16 Shades of Blue’ and ‘Baker Baker’ brought the most devoted of the crowd to the front of the stage. Amos has a voice that could lure sailors to their death. I’m grateful she used it to build a prodigious career instead.
Sophie Joske: images: Graeme Watson
Read More: Check out our interview with Tori Amos.Â
