Girl, you got to find you the man
who can smoke this out, Bad Medicine
I was originally going to drop out of tour after the Indianapolis show and rejoin it for Red Rocks, but when starting to actually plan the travel, I realized that the Boston show was a logistical nightmare, but Indy and Louisville are incredibly close to each other, so it was a no-brainer to swap them: I sold my Boston ticket and added the Kentucky show instead—a state I would otherwise never get to, which is also exciting! I really liked Louisville’s vibe, and the Palace was aptly named: It was a truly incredible, stunning building; I gasped when I walked in, which staff got a real kick out of, even more so when the friends I was with told them I was from Europe. I’ve never seen another theater as heavily ornamented as this, with a gorgeous vaulted night sky ceiling, and somehow none of it felt tacky, just opulent—perfect for my last double-digit show!
The room was buzzing with excitement before Tori hit the stage—she hadn’t played Louisville since American Doll Posse, and she historically always delivers at this venue. God was the perfect upbeat opener, and I could immediately tell that she was in much better spirits and better vocal shape than the previous night in Indianapolis—the Southern Hospitality must’ve helped, too! She said that “it really doesn’t take much for me to feel back in the South again. Thank you for all the Bourbon, we’re very appreciative, but it’s too early for that, we got lots to do first… got some magic to make!“, and boy, did they ever! The Ocean to Ocean intro was well over four delightful minutes long, but after that… personally, I don’t think there was a show on this tour where the set felt more unpredictable to me*—but in a good and fun way! (* I am obviously not counting Paris, which was utterly bonkers and completely shifted the goalposts).
Don’t Make Me Come to Vegas brought the first Southern flavor to the set—I hadn’t seen it since Hamburg, and I was really into it. This tour has brought me around to this song, which was always my least favorite on Scarlet’s Walk—I still consider it one of the weaker tracks, but there is a subtle oddness in the arrangement that feels very playful. Next up, Beauty Queen—the addition of the band brings in this new darkness that I am absolutely crazy about; it’s even more ominous, and honestly works so well that I’m surprised it took her so many band tours to decide to try it with backing. It gave way to a beautiful Horses—the tension-build-up before the bridge is delicious, as is the deep rumbling piano—one of the many highlights tonight.
Liquid Diamonds was next up—third time on the US leg so far, it definitely felt like she was now making up for not playing it in Europe even once! It’s a top four song for me and I’m not likely to ever get tired of it regardless, but this band arrangement is so full of added little details and variations, I notice something new to get lost in every time I hear it. She introduced the next song, the last one before the solo section, as a special request, saying that they haven’t played it much, but the story hails from where her outfit is from—she was sporting the tartan one last worn for opening night in Scotland, and the surprise was a delicate, lovely Selkie (with a tiny bit of Merman cleverly thrown in—in my opinion, one of the very few new mashups she’s come up with this tour that actually work). She hadn’t been lying either, this was quite the rarity—I hadn’t heard it since the very first UK/Ireland leg in 2022, and tonight was its last outing.
We stayed in Scotland—the first solo song was Twinkle. It’s a song I love—along with Gold Dust, her most perfect album closer—but not one that ever comes to mind when I envision an ideal live set, yet I’m always delighted when it pops up with the fuller piano, it’s such a subtle yet hopeful song. Tonight’s performance was a bit peculiar, because she did the Iona verse twice, giving it a little spin for extra emphasis the second time by singing “She said ‘I really did, I really did, I killed a man, T…’” to get more of a crowd reaction. It seamlessly flowed into Toast—its third and final outing on the tour, across three legs, and I incredibly got to be there for them all. This one usually manages to make me teary-eyed—it’s a fragile song, but it hits me like a train.
I wondered at the time what the connection between these two songs is, and what brought her Scottish mood out in Kentucky in the first place… Toast is such a Barcelona-coded song to me that I don’t think I ever consciously connected the dots from Iona Abbey to Dalhousie Castle before! And then there’s the whiskey connection—from Scotch to Bourbon, it all made sense. This was a really gorgeous, but also a bit of a sadomasochistic solo section, so bringing the band back for Upside Down as the follow-up was a stroke of genius—it was the last one on the tour, and if I hadn’t learned to recognize it by the projections, I never would’ve been able to place the improvised intro she got lost in, not in a million years—throughout the tour, this was the song intro they varied and played with the most, always keeping us on our toes.
A breathtaking Hey Jupiter was next up, the fourth Boys For Pele song of the night, a rare amount on this tour… it’s such a profound, unique song to mourn the end of a relationship—a loss so intense it’s like the metaphorical break-up between two planets. It gave way to the high energy bit of the show, as she followed up with Siren… it’s a mic-drop moment in any set she performs it in, just like Precious Things—her incredible piano chops are on full display with a fast, relentless melody, and she makes it look utterly effortless. I liked how it called back to Selkie/Merman earlier in the set, and you know it was a good performance when she drops a big glop of drool at the end! She made a wave motion with both her hands towards the monitors—her nickname for Sara is Mermaid, and she always comes running to watch her from the side of the stage for this one, it’s their special bond. And then she turned to the band, and said “hit me… hit me boys!“, and Ash counted them into my wish and request for tonight—Fast Horse!
I knew that it had been sound-checked in Michigan and was waiting for it to pop up, but when she didn’t play it at either of the past two shows I panicked a bit and wrote her a letter about it that I turned in today, since tonight was my last show before dropping off and picking back up in Red Rocks… at the time, my dumb ass completely blanked on the fact that she probably planned and saved it for Louisville all along because of the Kentucky Derby connection, duh! Be that as it may, it was a personal live debut for me, and it’s one of my favorites from Abnormally Attracted to Sin and her Southern/twangy songs. It’s also catchy as hell, despite its very unusual song structure: The chorus slows it down, it’s the verses that are the bombastic part. The timing also feels really uniquely designed… she somehow captures the feeling of riding a horse with the melody. It was great, I just wish she’d made use of the organ—it’s an organ song, and the Nord is right there, collecting dust! The main set ended with Cornflake Girl, where she seemed to be having some monitor troubles, as she had to motion for her tech to turn up the piano several times… but this song is in her bones, and she never broke her rhythm.
If there’s a perfect place for Big Wheel to be played—a song about whisky turning into rain to wash it all away—then it must surely be Louisville, Kentucky, the gateway to Bourbon country. Jon had fun with the intro, making it extra twangy, and Tori was absolutely living, and it wasn’t just her pom-pom toting cheerleaders on the side of the stage tonight—the whole audience was vibing… but then the room practically imploded for the next one, which was The Waitress. I should’ve bet money that it would make the set tonight—the Louisville performance from the Plugged tour is widely considered to be the very best of them all, so she gave us a little throwback! She was cute, perfectly aware of how excited everyone was for the ten minutes to come. Tonight was my favorite little intro dance she did out of all the Waitresses I got to see (which is all of them except the last one in San Francisco!)… at first she just had one arm reaching high, sort of swaying/circling to the beat, the other holding on to the piano, and then she brought it down, palm upwards, as if she were, in fact, a waitress carrying a platter.
She really channeled 1998, conjuring some Plugged magic without pushing it too far beyond what suits her voice in 2023—was it objectively the best performance of The Waitress on this tour, in terms of high notes, pitch, whatever? Probably not, but it was my favorite, I felt like I got baptized. She had been on absolute fire the entire show, and this was the perfect cherry on top, she gave it her all, and knew she was delivering—she was smiling ear to ear, tapped the piano on “I believe in that girl“, and, well… by now you should know that I firmly believe that the fierceness of a performance is directly proportional to how much she loses control of her drooling, and there were huge globs of it dripping down from her mouth, from the microphone, flying all over the place. This was hands down one of the very best shows of the entire tour, and after this, I was really regretting my decision to skip the St. Louis and Omaha shows in favor of a couple of days of hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park, but it was too late for a change of plans… rest assured that Red Rocks occupied all my thoughts for the next five days.
Setlist
God
Ocean to Ocean
Don’t Make Me Come to Vegas
Beauty Queen
Horses
Liquid Diamonds
Selkie / Merman
Twinkle (solo)
Toast (solo)
Upside Down
Hey Jupiter
Siren
Fast Horse
Cornflake Girl» E n c o r e «
Big Wheel
The Waitress
Banner image credit: Emily May / The Photo Ladies
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