Tori Amos, performing on stage at the Stifel Theatre
Tori Amos brought her most recent album, In Times of Dragons, to St. Louis’ Stifel Theatre for a sold-out show on Monday, August 17th, her first time back since 2023’s Ocean to Ocean tour.
What a welcome return it was.
I first became a fan of Amos around my high school years. Her early albums came out before I was even ten, so it wasn’t until 2004 or so that I was old enough to appreciate her baroque take on pop. With music (and film in even more concrete ways), I’ve always been interested not just in the song itself, but also who wrote, produced, directed, visualized, conceptualized, recorded it, etc. In my not-humble-opinion, these things matter as much as the product itself. In my burgeoning metal years, I was surprised to hear a young Trent Reznor (NIN) provide backing vocals to Amos’ “Past the Mission,” a lovely song with an interesting key-and-tonal switch between verse and chorus, moving from bubbly and spunky to haunting and lyrical in mere moments. It was love at first listen, so to speak, and from there I dove deep, spinning Little Earthquakes, Under the Pink, and Boys for Pele as often as I would a Slayer, Carcass, or Behemoth record.
I mention this to illustrate how varied Amos’ appeal can be: though I’d never seen her live until now, I correctly expected to find an auditorium full of “Toriphiles”—or “Ears with Feet” as she calls fans—who come from many different worlds, backgrounds, and with radically different music tastes beyond Amos.
There were plenty of older fans coming to appreciate the latest iteration of Tori’s magic that they’d fallen in love with so many years ago, as well as younger, hipster crowds looking to the past to appreciate their favorite artists’ favorite artist. Influence endures, it seems. And Amos’ music, equally fun and free as it is dark and enchanting, lives on because it never asks that you be one kind of person to appreciate it.
It was genuinely moving, then, to be one Toriphile in a sea of many, settled into the beautiful and elegant confines of the Stifel Theatre, everyone there waiting for the same voice.
Age hasn’t diminished Amos’ voice so much as reshaped it — where her younger self could soar into piercing, crystalline highs, the Tori on stage Monday, arms split between a grand piano and keyboard rig, sang lower and smokier, her tone imbued with a husky, mature timbre that gives classic songs a newfound gravity, as though she now performs them from the other side of everything they originally were. It’s a gorgeous transformation, the scope of an artist who has lived within her own catalog long enough to find new rooms to explore even as she redesigns older ones.
Watching Amos weave wonder at the keys demonstrates command of an instrument she’s spent a lifetime not just mastering, but arguing with, coaxing along, and loving unconditionally. And that special thing she does: playing a grand piano with one hand and a keyboard angled beside her with the other, singing into mics above both setups as she glides effortlessly from song to song. The instruments, similar and different, exist in musical conversation with each other, allowing Tori to improvise moment to moment how she’s feeling.
Amos’ band and backing singers also brought a tight, unified collaboration to the evening: long-time bassist Jon Evans demonstrated once again a wonderfully fluid and adaptive style that plays well off of Amos’ layered piano compositions—they would often shoot each other a knowing smirk or laugh together, underscoring the kind of closeness one can have with a collaborator of nearly 30 years. And new touring drummer Earl Harvin held his own in the lineup, providing perfect percussive support to keep time and rhythm to Amos’ melody. While her music has never been drum-heavy, sometimes restraint with a variety of softer tools beyond bass and snare provide just as much impact in more nuanced, and improvisational ways.
Dragon motifs swirled through the lighting and projections on stage, with moody, painterly washes of color shifting to the emotional register of each song. Above the performers was a giant circular structure, resembling a kind of mechanical ouroboros—a design that invites audiences to imagine a portal between the past and present, complementing In Times of Dragons as a progressive study of patriarchal abuse and divine feminine inner strength to transcend.
As has been the case more and more in Tori’s world, her visual aesthetic and musical approach hues closer to art installation pieces than typical touring displays or pop song-writing. It’s a theatrical atmosphere in the fullest sense that doesn’t take away from the fun of such classics as “Cornflake Girl.”
The opener, Bartees Strange, is an indie singer-songwriter from Oklahoma who brings authenticity and a similar sense of spontaneity to his performance. Though musically their styles are somewhat different, there is a great deal of thematic texture and social awareness that make absolute sense in pairing. Strange was and is genial, humorous, insightful, and earnest: no backing band around him—just a mic, guitar, and amp were all he needed to sing songs of sobriety, protest, and the challenges and splendor of love.
It was a lifetime goal to see Tori Amos perform live, and it finally happened. After twenty years of my own love, and for many closer to three-plus decades, Tori’s love and light shines brighter than ever, and her music still wields humor, horror, and mystical power as forces of the universe that often we experience in equal measure. Her show at the Stifel Theatre reminded us in the audience that artists evolve even as they recall the foundations of their creative lives, and that art heals brokenness, even if it takes time to find a way back to being whole. That this has been Tori’s thematic and musical guiding star since the early ‘90’s demonstrates how singular she remains.
Key Songs: “Cornflake Girl” (stone-cold classic cut from Under the Pink, 1994); “Caught a Lite Sneeze” (also stone-cold classic, Boys from Pele, 1996); “Climb (my favorite from the night, a stunning deep cut from her more recent Native Invader, 2017); and “Shush” (a haunting opener from In Times of Dragons). | Zach K. Johnson
