I fear my fear is greater than my faith
But I walk the missionary way
Halle (Saale) was the second additional German show added after the rescheduling of the European dates, and it’s notable for marking the very first time Tori would play a show in the former GDR…! Unfortunately, I don’t think she was aware of it—the two long-time traveling fans I know who call this their hometown didn’t make the letter drop, and I saw no unknown faces, i.e. no locals—so I don’t think she got a feeling for where she was playing.
Sara spoke somewhat disapprovingly about what a dark show the previous night had been, and mentioned that Tori is so bad at high-fives that they’ve taken up practicing them daily so she won’t make a fool of herself during the curtain calls. This show was the only time she recycled one of the outfits from the 2022 leg—she wore it a handful of times in North America, including Vancouver. What a difference the lack of slits makes as far as making it seem as if she’s drowning in fabric, but I really love this deep emerald green color on her.
The show began with a deja-vú—they opened with Take to the Sky (sans gay gay gay), which had closed the show the previous night, something I don’t think has ever happened, not even back in the early 90’s! I didn’t really like it as an opener… or rather, it didn’t work, because the energy levels plummeted immediately afterwards; they tried to start with a bang that fizzled out. I say tried because this wasn’t it; she didn’t have it in her, she sounded rough and out of breath. There’s no way to tip-toe around it: This was the worst show of the tour; top-notch musicianship, but from the start, she was really struggling with her voice.
She gave her all in Berlin, and Halle paid the price. Her spoken voice was almost worse, she sounded gravelly, and she immediately addressed the state of it when she greeted the audience, blaming her fall in Amsterdam…? She added that it had been a tough few days, essentially apologizing in advance for the show they were about to play, saying that they were going to give us all they’ve got, and asking us to sing along in case she stops… I have never witnessed her so insecure and contrite? When she introduced the band she did however remark that Jon has seen her “in worse shape than I am tonight… playing a show at Madison Square Garden“.
They tried to compensate as best as they could—the setlist featured all three of her known safety songs, every instrumental improv and jam was longer than usual, and the songs she picked were meant to be easy on her range, but it was still quite rough, and what made it even more heart-breaking to witness is that she knew it. She was super appreciative between each and every song, thanking the audience for the applause, making an apologetic prayer hand motion, bowing, sending kisses, air hugs, and making hand-hearts.
If this had been a solo tour, Halle might’ve gotten a bonkers, once-in-a-lifetime show like NOLA 2017, but with the band in tow, she just tried to get through it as best as she could… and that’s the sense I got, she wasn’t enjoying this, she just wanted to get it over with. She would slump after every song, looking spent, and gathering her strength for the next one. Up until tonight, I had never seen a less than great Sweet Sangria, but she kept dropping words, and frequently touched or apologetically motioned to her throat between songs throughout the show.
She was in desperate need of a day off; injury or not, she doesn’t have the stamina to deliver consistent quality during a five-show-week/three-show-run anymore. Which is perfectly fine, but her management needs to adapt and stop planning tours as if she were still forty or even fifty, because they’re not doing her (or the fans who get her on such an off night) any favors. I know that she prides herself in being a “road dog”, but these crazy, packed schedules with a ton of travel between cities are just not sustainable… hell, I am in my early thirties and keeping up with tour takes a lot out of me, and I’m not sound-checking plus performing two hours a night!
I don’t want to come across as if I thought this entire show was trash, because it wasn’t, there were some good moments too, and Honey was one of them: Her lower register was amazing, and she really leaned into it during it, so that whole performance was really great, it garnered her genuine and really enthusiastic applause that lasted well into the next song’s jam. She was enjoying herself during it, sitting at the piano with her legs and arms crossed, eyes closed, smiling to herself and mouthing “okay, okay” at Jon’s groove before joining in. She sang pretty much the entirety of Don’t Make Me Come to Vegas in a low register as well, which wasn’t necessarily bad as much as just unusual.
Suede was terrific, hands down my favorite performance of the night. The solo song was preceded by a meandering story about how she experienced the period right after 9/11:
“After 9/11 happened, we were in New York City, we were about to do the David Letterman show, and we were in Midtwon when it happened, and I hung around there for a few days. It was strange times, people putting bread from the buffet in their bags, it was just… shocking, something, as an American, I had never experienced anything like this, differently than people in Europe having experienced things and tragedies and shocking things…”
“So, at a a certain point, rock’n’roll travels on buses, right, so I was invited by some rocker to join his pot-infused bus all the way down to Miami. And although it was appealing, I had a baby that was down in Florida, and I didn’t think it would be great to come smelling like space cakes on fire when I saw her. So another bus showed up and so we jumped on the bus, and drove all the way down to Miami with double-drivers, with fashionistas with me, hair and make-up, y’know, big red lips—gay people, going into these Southern cafés with truckers, and believe it or not, the truckers would give my lot hugs. That’s the amazing thing about that time. There was a moment where people didn’t see people as Other, it was just ‘here we are, we’ve had this tragedy, do you need a hug?'”
“I don’t know why I’m compelled to tell this story, except I saw the wall, the remnants of it, in Berlin, and of course when I came here in ’91, I saw it then… and it’s just that in America some people have been trying to build a wall, and I thought it was poignant to talk about a time though when those barriers came down, through tragedy, and people were able to not see differences, but just have empathy, and it was a beautiful moment. And seeing that made me decide… David Letterman’s people called, I’d just made it to Florida, and within an hour I gave my baby a hug, and my husband, and jumped on the bus to go back, and be the first music to play on David Letterman.”
“I didn’t know what to play, people were suggesting songs and I welcome that always, ’cause five thousand heads are better than one, I believe that… so Imagine came up, all kinds of songs came up, and this was the song though, that I thought, after seeing truckers hugging people that perhaps they might have judged in a different way on my trip… that’s not what they were doing, they were loving, and I thought, while the drums of war were beginning to beat from the Bush administration, that it was time to put out a different message, of what was really happening in the country.”
What followed all that was a really emotional rendition of Tom Waits’ Time, the first song played on David Letterman following the terrorist attacks.
After hearing her, I hadn’t expected any debuts tonight, but she still delivered two, back-to-back: Firstly, the band live debut of Ruby Through the Looking-Glass! The intro was impossible to place, and, for me, it was definitely a really unexpected yet welcome surprise—I love all the Hidden Treasures. It worked well with her vocal tone, the bridge was especially wonderful, and it’s sparse enough to begin with to allow her some breathing room—I don’t think it’s wrong to say that it was added to the list of safety songs as the tour progressed. Secondly, quite the sudden pivot: This year’s live return of Devil’s Bane, which means that halfway through the EU tour, we finally got some proper organ action—it had been pretty much gathering dust! I was glad to have it back, but… she struggled, especially with the chorus. I also found it a little odd placed so early in the set, purely because it had morphed into the stage rush cue last year!
It was followed by another known safety song, Father’s Son… which I really enjoyed, it plays to her strengths, especially with this unhurried, easy-going arrangement. The seed connection between this and the preceding Devil’s Bane wasn’t lost on me either, I love it when she constructs setlists by word association. Addition of Light Divided and Cornflake Girl closed the set—the latter was a little weird because the piano was unplugged at the start? She was playing the intro riff, but we couldn’t hear it over the band, I’ve never had that happen before—the mic not turned on in time, plenty, that’s pretty much guaranteed to happen, but never a silenced piano! She went for the high notes sparingly, but when she did, they were good—honestly, I don’t think of Cornflake Girl as an “easy” song at all, but I’ve never seen a bad performance of it! She never goes on auto-pilot either, despite it being one of her two most-played songs (as far as overall live-stats go, it’s neck-to-neck with Precious Things, with well over 800 plays throughout her career), she always visibly enjoys it.
We stage-rushed at the end of the main set, and there was essentially no sound right in front of the stage—the encore was a muddy mess, I could barely hear her vocals. The first song was House of the Rising Sun, and even though I could not hear her well, it was one of my favorite moments of the night—she was writhing on her bench, flipping her hair, licking the microphone… listening back to it on the bootleg, it does hold up as a highlight of the show; it’s a good performance because she gets to growl and lean into her chest voice, and maybe because the show was approaching its end, she let loose—it was fierce. I also couldn’t help but laugh at what a fitting choice it was, because our Halle hotel had turned out to be right next to a brothel that was not at all subtle about advertising its services, haha.
She ended on Precious Things, which I was surprised about—it’s a demanding song, not just vocally, but stamina-wise, and with a recently injured arm? A truly ballsy choice, but a great way to end on a high note, especially since this wasn’t a setlist for the casual fan—almost exclusively b-sides, deep cuts, covers, and non-singles from the 2000s. Despite being weak on the whole, there were still some good moments I was glad to have been there for, but I left the show considering whether the trade-off of a fantastic show like Berlin was worth it if we were then going to get a weak one to follow… or if it would be better for her to coast, not delivering any stellar highs, but also no abysmal lows—more consistency would definitely be fairer to the local crowd. Mostly though, I was glad—for her sake and mine—that there was a day off coming up!
Setlist
Take to the Sky / I Feel the Earth Move (Carole King)
Ocean to Ocean
Sweet Sangria
Honey
Don’t Make Me Come to Vegas
Suede
Time (Tom Waits) (solo)
Ruby Through the Looking-Glass
Devil’s Bane
Father’s Son
Addition Of Light Divided
Cornflake Girl» E n c o r e «
House of the Rising Sun (traditional)
Precious Things
watercolorstain 