THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 29, 1994 TAG: 9407290118
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Music Review
SOURCE: BY SUE SMALLWOOD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 49 lines
TORI AMOS needs no special effects. With just a pair of pianos and her penetrating, fluid voice, the singer/songwriter offered an emotionally intense, musically acute performance that could have cracked the concrete at the Harrison Opera House Wednesday evening.
Writhing astride a bench in front of a gleaming black Bosendorfer grand, the tomato-tressed songstress released herself from the insidious shackles of self-doubt, guilt, repression and hate in a visceral song cycle culled from her two LPs and one EP.
Vocally, Amos possesses a vast expressive range, using ever-shifting dynamics and unusual phrasing to underscore the compelling emotionality of her songwriting. Hushed mutterings, mere whispers and a Kate Bush-like preciousness in quieter moments swelled to broad, angry yowls, often within the same song. She showed remarkable control, particularly when sliding within her upper register.
Among the evening's many standout selections were an emphatically slowed down rendition of her biting 1992 hit ``Silent All These Years,'' an a cappella take on ``Me and a Gun,'' Amos' painfully detached chronicle of her own rape years ago, and the ghostly ``Bells For Her,'' from new album ``Under the Pink,'' which Amos played on an upright piano detuned and muted to resemble off-kilter chimes.
Canned percussion tracks drowned Amos' ebbing and crashing pianoforte on crowdpleasers ``God'' and ``Cornflake Girl,'' also from ``Under the Pink.''
Amos treated the alternately transfixed and wildly enthusiastic crowded House audience to a string of encores featuring elegiac covers of the Rolling Stones' ``Angie,'' Don McLean's ``American Pie'' and Nirvana's ``Smells Like Teen Spirit,'' an obviously heartfelt requiem for the late Kurt Cobain. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by LOREN HAYNES
Tori Amos' newest album is ``Under the Pink.''
MUSIC REVIEW
Tori Amos
Wednesday at the Harrison Opera House, Norfolk
by CNB