‘You have been so missed” beams Tori Amos, sat astride her piano stool three songs into her first gig since the pandemic. The feeling is clearly mutual; the adoring front rows honour her return with three consecutive standing ovations, and you can feel the sense of relief ricocheting off the London Palladium’s ornate walls. Without the “voltage” of performing live, and grieving the death of her mother, the American singer-songwriter has said that she had depression in lockdown, eventually finding her way back via the rugged countryside of her adopted home of Cornwall. Realising she had to write her way out of the emotional fog, just as she had done on 1992’s uncompromising breakthrough Little Earthquakes, the ornate Ocean to Ocean started to take shape.
While this short UK tour is ostensibly in support of that album, her sixteenth, Amos is famous for her eclectic setlists peppered with fan favourites, B-sides and covers. Tonight is no different. After her ecstatic arrival in which she bows and mimes a wide group hug, she settles down between her giant Bösendorfer piano on one side and a bank of keyboards on the other. Head turned to face outwards, eyes peering inquisitively over the top of black-framed glasses, she joins her drummer and guitarist for the swirling Juárez, a song about the murder of hundreds of women taken from 1999’s electronic curio, To Venus and Back.
