"Curtain Call" is one of the highlights of Abnormally Attracted to Sin, and "Bells for Her" transforms from a gentle, sinister dirge on album into something with heft and weight live. Not until halfway through her set did Tori play any new songs from Native Invader, and when she did, she stuck to the ballads: "Reindeer King," and "Breakaway." Both songs are lovely but didn't hold the audience's attention as much as the classics they were surrounded by did. For her second song, "Bliss," the first single and standout from 1999's To Venus and Back, and third, "Father's Son" from 2007's American Doll Posse, she makes few changes from the album versions, but she begins fourth song "Amber Waves," from 2002's Scarlet's Walk, with an improvised intro promising, "America, we won't let them swallow you whole." "Amber Waves" deals with the corruption of a young woman and by extension the corruption of the whole country, and Tori plays it switching back and forth between her piano and keyboards, repeating certain lines for effect. Backing tracks were only used on a few songs during the set, which is overall a good thing having the extra instrumentation is nice, but even better are the unexpected improvisational twists and turns Tori frequently takes when bringing her beloved catalog of songs to a live setting. Because of this, when she opens the show with "i i e e e" from 1998's From the Choirgirl Hotel, it's with a backing track to give the song its layers of sensual repeated vocals. Ebony beauty, pass this shade The looking glass relects Then a voice calls me back 'This i. Pulling Saturday duty to talk about some remixes.Though she's toured often with a band in the past, the Native Invader outing is a solo one for Tori, leaving the stage empty except for her, a piano, and keyboards. This is Tori Amos, and she is here to say. It is track 7 from the album Abnormally Attracted to Sin that was released in 2009.
It’s a mature, poignant kiss-off to the entire industry, a retrospective of her entire history in five minutes that you undoubtedly missed because you decided “Sleeps With Butterflies” was too pithy or you felt too ashamed of the high school crush that denied you and fueled many a sing-along to “Pretty Good Year”, so you stopped listening.īut listen to the way she says “oh, this is not business. However, if you’re an older EWF,listen to “Curtain Call”. If you’re 16-21 and you’re reading this and you have any emotional intellect whatsoever, stop listening to whatever the fuck you’re listening to and go get a copy of Boys For Pele. Tori’s grown and matured from her days on her knees on that filthy mattress in the BFP booklet, and so have we as listeners. I hate hate hate hate HATE calling it that, though, because it continues to reinforce this notion of apology and embarrassment people who strongly related to the first three records and hung on for Choirgirl and Venus feel for everything Tori’s done since Scarlet. “Curtain Call” is, possibly only other than “Carbon”, my favorite “later-period” Tori song.
Not from Posse but the following record Abnormally Attracted To Sin, an album whose musical theatre title overshadows for most any potential (and existing) brilliance of its songs. If I only have once shot at selling you on Tori’s 00’s work, let it be this one song.