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The Oregonian Tori’s magical music tour Songstress Amos consults her many muses to
create “From the Choirgirl Hotel” By Marty Hughley Tori Amos called her latest album From the Choirgirl Hotel, and that’s
a revealing title, in an odd way - although for this uniquely colorful pop
star, odd often is considered characteristic. In Tori-speak, the choirgirls in question are the songs themselves, or more
accurately the spirits that gave rise to them. Amos frequently credits various
spirits, energies or mystical beings (and even, in one much-lampooned instance,
“Vikings”) with sending her the songs she performs. These days, apparently,
they’re taking the form of choirgirls. “I have a very busy life because these girls are
coming in and out all the time, since I was a little girl,” Amos told
The New York Times. “I saw the girls being like a
singing group because they’re very independent, but they hang out together.
They have their own solar systems, they have their own family trees, but I did
see them having margaritas by the pool. Sometimes they let me sing with them.”
It’s a fitting image for the kind of apparition/inspiration that would visit
Amos, who will visit Oregon this weekend for shows in Portland and Eugene. The
daughter of a North Carolina Methodist minister, Amos has a pretty enough voice
to have been a choirgirl but spent her childhood as a piano prodigy, playing
from the age of 2 and studying at the prestigious Peabody Conservatory starting
at age 5. As her legend goes, she was tossed out at age 11 for deviating from
the rigors of classical instruction and indulging in improvisation. Probably those choirgirls starting to pipe up. But they’ve served her well,
leading her to a style that fuses baroque piano with rock sonic dynamics: the
dramatic scope of Kate Bush with the frankness of Chrissie Hynde, the sacred
with the profane, the frilly with the furious. And they’ve brought Amos as devout a following as any in pop music. Her
first three solo albums (a 1988 outing with her pop-metal band Y Kant Tori Read
is best forgotten) have been million sellers, with Choirgirl Hotel well
on its way. Earlier this year, the Washington Post reported on the Internet
that “Amos is a goddess second to none with almost 4,000 Web sites.” Independent herself, Amos has continued to show a rebellious streak in her
music, flinging barbed lines at her religious upbringing and tussling with the
light and dark of a personal, often highly inscrutable spiritual realm. Claims that Vikings, or whoever, write her songs for her (along with a
propensity for less-printable quotes that tangle spirituality and sexuality in
ways that could make Prince re under no obligation to use any other name, or
anti-name appear normal) have made it easy to present Amos as some sort of
kooky New Age fairy queen. But really, she just has an eccentric and colorful
way of talking about things many musicians believe, particularly the idea that
artists are channelers of art more than they are creators of it. King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp, whose image is as studious as Amos’ is
flighty, once took the notion of the muse so far as to assert, “Any time you hear a musician talking about
self-expression, you know the music is going to stink.” Amos isn’t quite so hard core on the idea. “I’ll
manipulate a song the way I want to ‘cause I just like it that way,” she
told Rolling Stone. “It’s like I’m saying to the
muse, ‘Look, if you don’t want my input, go to Jewel.’” But despite referring to herself as “Attila the Honey” for her control-freak
tendencies, Amos has invited more input on her new work than she has before.
Instead of recording her piano and vocals first, then arranging the rest of the
music around that base, she played along with other musicians in the studio.
And instead of the solo-piano format she’s been known for on stage, she’s
touring for the first time with a full band, all the better to realize the more
rhythmic and immediate songs from “Choirgirl.” But no one’s likely to forget who’s central to this endeavor. Wherever the
songs come from and whoever helps give them the sonic clothing that lets them
walk around in the world, they seem to talk to and through one well-placed,
well-appointed source. Tori Amos clearly is a preferred hotel among muses. TORI AMOS IN PORTLAND: 8 p.m. Saturday WHERE: Rose Garden arena’s Theater of the Clouds WITH: The Devlins ADMISSION: $22.50-$29.50, Fastixx IN EUGENE: 7 p.m. Sunday WHERE: Cuthbert Amphitheater WITH: The Devlins ADMISSION: $28.50, Fastixx |