Greeting the monster in our Easter dresses
Father says, “Bow your head like the Good Book says”
Well, I think the Good Book is missing some pages
Finally: Berlin, the original opening night. Back at the album release event at Rough Trade, months away from the tour that then got postponed, the Berlin show was all Tori could talk about—she kept bringing it up unprompted. Historically, it’s always been one of the best shows of any given tour: She loves the city and the local crowd loves her, and as a result, she always delivers an incredible show, usually with at least one mind-blowing debut or surprise.
Other than for the orchestral Gold Dust tour, my first time in Berlin, I’ve only ever seen Tori at the Tempodrom. She loves that venue—in fact, during the show, she said that it is one of her favorites anywhere in the world. It does look cool as shit from the outside, somehow quintessentially Berlin, and so did her outfit: Black with an all-over geometric pattern that put one in mind of the famed Berlin club scene, coupled with purple shoes. The show proved that she had also spent some time thinking about all the Easter requests she’d gotten, because on this Easter Monday, she brought out loads of her irreverent Christian songs, starting with God.
The Ocean to Ocean intro had some nice, noticeable variation, the song itself was quite fierce, with growls and snarls just the way I like them, and she was back to doing the wave motion at the end—I truthfully cannot say that I noticed her injured shoulder bothering her at any point at this show, and I also didn’t catch any glimpse of kinesiology tape. When greeting the audience and introducing the band after, she said that they’ll “hopefully have some surprises“, because “Berlin does that to me!“. Girl, we know!
The next song was Crucify though, nothing overly exciting yet, but a great performance, with what I felt were particularly spacey keyboard notes—she got really playful with it and reacted with a big belly laugh at something Jon was doing during the intro. Addition of Light Divided followed, this early in a set for only the second time this year—it definitely felt like she was getting some of the semi-staples out of the way, hopefully to then kick into gear? I will admit, I wasn’t feeling that Berlin spark yet by this point… but then Pandora’s Aquarium happened, and something suddenly and majorly shifted. People I spoke to after remarked on the exact same thing, they felt it too—four songs in, and she was suddenly present and utterly plugged in.
The intro was the probably longest one I’ve seen her do for this song yet, two minutes, and the whole performance was just… impeccable, every high note in perfect pitch, every piano note clear and focused. The way the lights were reflecting off the Tempodrom’s roof was so mesmerizing, the ceiling kept drawing my gaze, like light sparkling off rippling water… I felt like I was in a giant bowl aquarium, but also in space. It was one of the best Pandora‘s, if not the best, that I’ve been fortunate enough to see, it really transported me someplace special, and it earned her the first standing ovation of the night. And then… the promised surprise.
The one-minute intro was mostly ambient sound texture, but the drums gave me an inkling of what was about to come, and my friend picked up on it too, we looked at each other wide-eyed… and then it started: Smokey Joe. She’s been known to refer to it as one of her favorite songs she’s ever written, and considering that, she doesn’t play it anywhere near often enough—in fact, this was only my second time seeing it live since Stuttgart 2014, the darkest show I’ve ever witnessed, featuring a whole string of songs about guns…! It’s a very special sort of violent mood that she rarely taps into—Juárez is the only song with a similar vibe that springs to mind.
Gosh, her voice was just utterly perfect for this song, and she looked so chuffed at the end, she knew exactly that she’d managed to deliver a surprise debut that we’d go crazy for. She kept singing “it’s so easy to do you harm” rather than “wish” throughout the entirety of the song, and was so into it, at one point she audibly sucked back drool. It was… incredible, and I didn’t think this moment could be topped… and then she immediately blew it out of the water, because it turned out that this was just her way of taking our hands and leading us into the Underworld.
The audience had lost their collective shit after Smokey Joe—personally, I was reeling from it so hard, I didn’t even notice the band leave the stage, and was still in the process of sitting back down after the standing ovation when she launched into… Easter Parade, a career first. I didn’t know what it was, although it’s got that particular type of old-timey Broadway melody that I knew it couldn’t possibly be an improv—I figured it was most likely a tune from a musical.
I wasn’t the only one after the show googling bits and pieces of the lyrics to look it up: Written by Irving Berlin (ha!) in 1933, Bing Crosby’s version as well as the Easter Parade movie starring Judy Garland and Fred Astaire popularized it… but it isn’t until I read the lyrics and compared them to her version, that I realized the creepy turn she gave it with her last, changed verse:
“Well, I could write a sonnet about your Easter bonnet
And of the girl we’re about to visit
Who did not go, who did not go, who did not go
To the Easter Parade…”
What followed was the most haunting Icicle I’ve ever seen live; she went to a whole other, dark place with it. If there would have been any belief left in me about it being a cheeky song about masturbation, this performance and how it was placed in the set would’ve killed it dead for good. The last live Icicle I’ve seen was when she paired it with the live debut of The Pool on the Native Invader tour—a song I’m convinced is one of the few in her catalogue that are more or less obliquely about the not often mentioned sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of a family friend when she was a child. The way she performed Icicle that night fundamentally changed the way I interpret and listen to it, and seeing it again now, sandwiched between two very telling songs, for the first time after that earth-shattering epiphany, only cemented it.
She whispered “feel the word” over a dozen times with increasing intensity and urgency, and touched the piano when she sang the “I have a hiding place” line, which was a whole new realization for me—the idea that she would escape into music and pour her terrible secret into her instrument because she had no one else to tell. And the bridge, my God—so quietly desperate, fantasy and hope brought down by a fallboard-slam and a whispered “so…” at the end that was like a sigh of utter defeat; I honestly can no longer fathom how I ever could’ve viewed this song in any other light.
Then, the band came back, Jon picked up an acoustic guitar, and she started on a jaunty intro—I knew it had to be Climb, but its mood was so very different from its London debut—much heavier, and thanks to the way the intro developed, utterly eerie. She first pulled one leg up under her, and then the other, quite literally climbing onto her piano bench—I’ve never seen her do this before, ever. It was exactly the way a little girl who otherwise wouldn’t be able to reach the keys would crouch on the stool, and she was playing scales (climbing the keys as well as the bench) with abandon.
Because of the way she allowed herself to be… “possessed”, for lack of a better word, this looked, sounded, and felt straight out of the Dew Drop Inn-era—for a moment, she was that little girl again, sing-whispering a deceptively fun little ditty to herself… one that’s literally about climbing the notes, and metaphorically about her trying to get over the wall of her trauma.
“Climb, climb, climb, climb, climb, climb, climb, up! Over the wall, climb
Again and again and again / Can’t go any higher, Tori, come back down…”
Climb itself was stunning, yet again—I would easily put it into the top three new arrangements for this whole tour, this is the song’s most perfect form, and it was flawless from its debut, perfectly rehearsed and realized.
“Only when you’re whole can you forgive / but it’s a long, long climb…“, it ends, and then—Little Amsterdam to conclude this dark mid-set narrative that began with Smokey Joe, which is essentially a revenge fantasy. Quite clearly, given the change from “wish” to “do you harm“, the homicidal thoughts in Smokey Joe weren’t just a fantasy this time, and she didn’t reach forgiveness by the end of Climb, so now the victim is shooting her abuser dead; “but momma, it wasn’t my bullet“. This turned out to be Little Amsterdam‘s last appearance in Europe—it’s like the song said all it had to say. The improvised bits tonight were quite chilling too:
“He’ll just watch you die / every time you say hello / every time you say anything at all / anything at all / anything… (…) You’ll see, he’ll watch you die / as you’re standing there in the light / he’ll try and bring you over to where there is no light…”
I would easily put this five-song-run up there with the second half of that infamous Stuttgart show as the darkest moment I’ve ever witnessed at a Tori show. Back then, the next day, I had the balls to ask her where that had come from, and I’ll never forget the way she grabbed my arm, looked me dead in the eyes, and said “Sometimes the darkness has to be let out“. She did that here, this was some form of blood-letting, and it’s probably no coincidence that she followed that whole narrative with Doughnut Song, giving us two Boys For Pele song in a row—she was violently shaking her head no to the “you can tell me it’s over” part, and even gave the band a motion to go for another round—it was stunning and fierce as hell.
Spring Haze featured a blissful intro that was well over three minutes long, as well as some delightful little variations she worked in because she’d slightly missed a cue or messed up in some slight way—I loved it, beginning to end, she could play it every night and I’d never get tired of it, it takes me places. For having just played such a dark set, she had been radiant throughout, but now she decided to change gears, and go out on an upbeat note—the main set ended with Cornflake Girl, and even though Precious Things had been on the written setlist as the first encore song (I would’ve preferred it, it would’ve fit the overall mood much better), she swapped it for Body and Soul instead.
Security was both prepared and quick—they came out of nowhere and beat everyone to the front. I ended up at the stage right by a staff member who, during the encore break, laughingly told me that he knows how it goes because this wasn’t his first time working a Tori Amos show—he had his back to her to monitor the crowd, but he was bobbing his head along to the music and seemed to quite enjoy it. Take to the Sky closed the show, and she grooved along to it with her leg up on the bench, dancing along to the guys’ jam in a really cute way, before blowing the roof off the place with a highly energetic performance.
This was the sort of show that had us all energized and walking out on air to then huddle together to excitedly analyze and pick it apart. The overwhelming consensus was that we had just witnessed the best show of the tour—she sounded stellar, she was plugged in, the energy was electric, the setlist was incredible… you know she just delivered an astonishing show when she brings back a rare, sought-after fan favorite, and that’s not even what anyone is really focusing on! It’s impossible to pick a single song or moment as the sole highlight of this show: the whole run from Smokey Joe through Little Amsterdam was A Moment™, and that alone was enough to make this the best Berlin show I’ve ever seen her play—and with that stunning Pandora’s Aquarium, Doughnut Song and Spring Haze on top of it, it wasn’t even a close contest.
Setlist
God
Ocean to Ocean
Crucify
Addition Of Light Divided
Pandora’s Aquarium
Smokey Joe
Easter Parade (Irving Berlin) (solo)
Icicle (solo)
Climb
Little Amsterdam
Doughnut Song
Spring Haze
Cornflake Girl» E n c o r e «
Body and Soul / Personal Jesus (Depeche Mode)
Take to the Sky / I Feel the Earth Move (Carole King)
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