While guitar driven singers invade the stages of "Girl Power" festivals such as Lilith Fair, TORI AMOS has been able to impose the piano as the main instrument to drive through her wilderness and fantasies. After three From the Choigirl Hotels and a few hits, the short redhead has finally exploded from a cult "tormented artist" state to filling immense arenas thanks to her latest effort From the Choirgirl Hotel. However it was not without anxiety that we headed for the stadium of the calamitous MIGHTY DUCKS, wondering how an arena of that size could possibly communicate the heat of her piano and her voice.
The first surprise was finding that the audience, for the most part, was 15 year old girls dressed in black, accompanied by their mothers. I was ready to think that SIOUXSIE SIOUX had replaced TORI when she finally took the stage.
Unfortunately, disappointment smacked me in the face as soon as the first song started, because of sound and arrangements denaturing the fragility of her compositions. It was kinda like BON JOVI, abandoned by Jon since he's discovered his new acting vocation, was supporting TORI on stage. Imagine: cheesy guitar solos from a vanhalenesque moron, a mediocre bassist, and an electronic pad drummer as powerful as AHA. As a result the flat sound drowned in the unaccoustic friendly stadium, as the poor versions of the songs, mostly from her new From the Choigirl Hotel, were giving birth to boredom.
However some highlights were when the band left her alone with her piano for such favorites as Winter, Hey Jupiter and Silent All These Years; along with the frenetic techno version of Raspberry Swirl and the haunting Siren.
I can therefore only advise you to listen to her studio From the Choigirl Hotels, waiting hopefully for an acoustic tour of intimate clubs that will set the clocks back.
