Waking Ear

Tori Amos/"Sugar" -- If you haven't heard this epic in concert, check out the live disc from To Venus and Back. That soaring part at the end gives me shivers every time. And Tori sounded great last night at her stop near Dallas. I think she's been sick the last couple of times she played here, so it was nice to hear the full range and power of her voice.

My fellow concert attendees thought the 2 1/2-hour concert was too long, and they're probably right. It wasn't so attention-getting that a listener unfamiliar with her entire body of work wouldn't get a little restless. But for me, it was perfect -- lots of material from Under the Pink, which sounds great with a backing band. Most of the set was either slow-paced songs or formerly uptempo songs slowed down, so it sounded a little plodding at times. And I yearned for Tori to drop her precious voice and use her lungs a little more. She sounds great when she belts out some of those key lyrics, and it feels awkward when she then goes back to the baby voice.

But these are small complaints, really. She's a terrific songwriter, and her vocals have, in time, outshone even her skills as a pianist. My other personal highlight was "Virginia," a great track from Scarlet's Walk. The recorded version is accompanied by banjo, so Tori approximated that sound on her piano. It was down-homey but spiritual, like the gothic Southern characters that populate much of that album.