The concert was great, and very different from the last concert we saw at Royce Hall just by virtue of having a full band behind her (Tori Amos performed solo last time we were there). It was also very different from the last time we saw Aimee Mann, at the House of Blues last summer. For one thing, she was focusing on songs from her new album, The Forgotten Arm.

It was also much more interactive than either of the other two concerts. What stuck in my mind was the request section. She had everything set up so that people would write the request on a piece of paper and leave it on the stage, but when she got to the break, people were shouting out titles. One guy came prepared with what looked like a balsa glider and wrote his request on that, adding that it was his birthday. I don’t remember his request, but she improvised “Happy birthday to the paper airplane man.” I’ve seen singers who get talkative, and singers who improv silly songs, but it really felt like the house was much smaller than 1800 people. (Of course, you could still make a drinking game out of the number of times she says “Thank you so much” after a song.)

Another funny moment was when someone shouted out a request for “Voices Carry.” “Voices Carry?” she said. “Why not ask for a Cyndi Lauper song? ‘Time after time…’” Surprisingly, after performing “King of the Jailhouse” for an encore, she finished up with none other than “Voices Carry,” altered to fit her current style.

The one thing I didn’t like about the concert was that the amplification was up way too loud. The couple sitting next to us left partway through because the woman kept covering her ears.

Of possible interest to my brother: the bio in the program was credited as labeled as “Courtesy of Wikipedia.”

The concert let out at 10:00, which was just as well, since the drive back was…interesting. Since we’d had to eat early to make it up to LA by 7:00 (and we just barely made it—the opening act had started singing), our plan was to grab a snack in Westwood and eat on the way back. We were surprised to find that there were lots of place open at 10pm on a Sunday, but I got frustrated trying to figure out which parking lots were fair game. We just got on the freeway, figuring on stopping in Manhattan Beach for a McDonald’s we knew of next to the freeway. The rain came back as we drove south, and then we started seeing lightning. When we stopped for food, we just parked the car facing southeast and watched the light show. There was a fantastic lightning bolt that snaked sideways across half the sky in front of us. The rain got pretty heavy for the rest of the drive, but for some reason it cleared up again by the time we got home.

Well, the “Original Sinsuality” tour provided some clues going in: It was a short tour, the venues—in this case UCLA’s Royce Hall—were comparatively small (which is why the show sold out in 10 minutes), and it was named after a “quiet Tori” song. She dispensed with the band entirely. It was just Tori Amos, a grand piano, two kinds of organs and another keyboard I couldn’t quite identify. We heard songs you never hear in concert (“Yes Anastasia,” “Doughnut Song”) or wouldn’t expect to (“Toast”), even when she takes a break from the band and does a piano set.

So, onto a review:

The Good:

• Lots of just Tori and a piano.
• Unexpected songs, including two neither of us recognized.
• Good acoustics. Any distortions were due to Tori’s own linguistic quirks, not the sound system.
• Unusual covers of “Living on a Prayer” and “All Through the Night.”

The Bad:

• Five minutes into ticket sales, “best available” turned out to be way off on the side of the U-shaped balcony, at an angle where we had to look around a pillar of speakers to see her most of the time.
• Not a big fan of the Hammond organ.
• Stuck next to some massive person who kept texting people on her(?) cell phone.
• Nothing at all from Choirgirl Hotel through Scarlet’s Walk—I was kind of hoping to hear “1,000 Oceans” once the tone was clear.

I still haven’t warmed up to The Beekeeper as much as I have to Scarlet’s Walk, which is now my favorite Tori album (followed by her debut, Little Earthquakes). But it’s an album worth listening to, and I would have hated to have missed that concert.

(This has been sitting in my drafts since the day after the concert. Time to publish it while it’s still somewhat topical.)