Come back Tori! All is forgiven.

I don't mean to bag to my favourite songstress, but her albums have been going downhill a bit recently. I think what happened was...her songs stopped being about anything. They always were a bit stream of conciousness, but post-Pele this tendency became exaggerated to the point that you couldn't actually pin down any one song and figure out decisively what it was alluding to beyond gigantic zebras and purple people. The songs lost focus and all started to blur into one big mess.

After the travesty that was Strange Little Girls, I didn't even bother picking up her last two studio albums (although I did have an interesting conversation with a friend a few weeks ago who said that she was in some kind of contract she didn't want to be in, and was just pumping out albums to get out of the contract, and that her latest album was the first album she was releasing outside the contract, and was much better as a result). Then, after I got back from Ammy-Dammy, my sister e-mailed and told me not to forget I was going to see Tori live in concert with her on Friday- it was news to me! Because of my recent ambivalence towards Tori's music, I can't say I showed up to the concert with that much enthusiasm.

That changed rapidly once the show started. God, what an amazing artist. Amazing voice, amazing talent on a piano (my favourite instrument), and an amazing presence on stage. I've seen her live twice before (once at the Apollo and once on the corner of Hollywood & Vine), but this was the first time I'd seen her without a backing band, and boy, what a difference it makes when it's just her and four keyboards. You'd think it would somehow be less energetic and less capable to lifting you up, but, somehow, she manages to sustain an energy that's all the more impressive for its isolation. I can't think of a time I've been more impressed by an artist than I was when she was playing a piano with her left hand, a harpsichord with her right, and straddling the two instruments in a bizarre contorqure, singing all the while- as my sister remarked, her voice is so powerful, it is an instrument unto itself.

There was a really good mix of old and new, and I have to say I had a good cry when she played 'Cloud on my Tongue', it was just so damned beautifully done. I was also really impressed by some of her new stuff, so much so that I'll be wandering down to HMV today to pick up the new album. I'll let you know if it's a return to form- her live show certainly was.