It's been almost 20 years since I had last seen Tori Amos live. To the best of my recall saw her in 2002 and 2004. Putting her at around 39 years old for those performances. As far as her studio album go, "Scarlet's Walk" was the the last one I listened to on a regular basis. "Native Invader:" I reviewed here , but aside from that I have only caught a few songs here and there. This was the second night of this leg of her tour which opened in West Palm Beach. It makes sense that Amos who is a part-time Florida resident would include multiple dates in the state. The opening act was the trio towr's , which was a quaint folk act that felt like some kind of mom-core as their songs seemed to be about the changing landscape of domestication. Tori's band took the stage first promptly at 9 pm. They were two session musicians John Evans and Ash Soan, who seemed pleased that they were able to cut loose and indulge their prog rock side.
She opened with "God" and followed that with the title track from "Ocean to Ocean" which is the album is touring behind. With 16 albums in her discography, there is no way she could play something from each and still make the crowd happy. If she stuck to the hits, then it would have leaned perhaps more heavily than she would have liked are her first few albums. She actually played the most from "Scarlet's Walk" which found four of those songs in the set. At 59 it is understandable why she did not play more from the first two album that might fall a little out of her range, as she did not sing up in her soprano range much. Let's face it Tori has retained a very strong cult following that allowed her to sell out the 2000 seat theater, putting here in range of what Morrissey has in terms of draw these days. If you asked your average twenty something, they are not likely to know who she is unless their parents exposed them to her.
But being a cult legend is not a bad thing as you are playing for the hard core fan base that is going to appreciate it when you dig deep and play a song like "Take to the Sky" which is a b-side from "Little Earth Quakes". I would say the hard core fan base made up perhaps half the audience, which left the other half the audience holding their heads in boredom as they wanted to here "hits" that really never came until she close with "Tear in Your Hand". I guess I split the difference as I knew the bulk of the songs, but aside from the Scarlet's Walk songs, many of deeper cuts, I at least found the jazzy jam versions that they played to be interesting, perhaps not the most energetically compelling if you were expecting a rock show, but very consistent with who Tori is as an artist , and for that I can not fault her , as it made me more curious to start digging back to see what I have missed over the years.
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