Tuesday May 12, 2009

Tori Amos performed tracks from her new album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, at the Savoy Theater in London last night.

While I wasn’t thrilled by her performance — it lasted at least two hours and bored me to tears (she’s a good singer, but, in my opinion, a bland performer) — I have to admit, some of her new songs are pretty catchy. I’ve listened to the album, which is due out May 19, and two tracks stand out for me: Welcome to England, which is the first single to be taken from the album, and Fire to Your Plain. The other tracks need a bit more time to grow on me.

Sooo, if you can spare a few quid, go out and buy it; or PAY to download it. Internet piracy is naughty, okay?

From Tori’s performance Monday, I learned that the lady is pretty handy on the piano. And they keyboard. And she can do both at the same time — with her legs wide open.

At the booze-up after Tori’s performance, we bumped into the lovely (at least I thunk they were, those three beers went straight to my head) guys from Polari Magazine, who interviewed Tori a few days after she originally canceled the gig. She was due to play the Savoy on April 27th, but postponed it due to food poisoning.

Amos says the reason she didn’t make it onstage that day is because “I couldn’t stand.”

“And I’d lost my voice as well,” she said. “We all recognized that it was an impossibility. There were not enough drugs in the world that could get me to stand. I’m the type of person that would say will do what’s necessary.  If I need a shot, if I need to do something, I’ll do it.

“I’m from the American side. I’m sort of like a little solider — give me my shots, let’s go to Africa, I’m going to the swamps. Let’s play the show.”

Of her new LP — it’s Tori’s 10th studio album — Amos added, “It’s a whole. It’s a story with short stories.

“What I want people to think about is that the beginnings of this record were being written at the end of our old world, where the credit was still ok, and that we could rest easy at night not thinking that everything we have might be gone tomorrow.

“The beginning of this whole work, the time frame, occurred as things were beginning to shake. I was watching Christian Lamb’s dailies, the montage of our life on the road, and I was seeing something that the music he was putting it to wasn’t telling, that a different story needed to be told.”

Tags: tori amos