When Tori Amos brings her Garden of Sinsuality Tour to Seattle tomorrow for a sold-out, stripped-down concert at Benaroya Hall, expect an intimate affair with little instrumentation. Unlike her earlier, band-backed tours, the only performer on stage will be Amos and the only instruments on stage will be her piano and a Hammond organ.
The tour is in support of her ninth and most recent record, The Beekeeper, one of Amos’ most accessible albums to date. The 19 songs on the album are divided into six thematically arranged chapters, addressing subjects ranging from the human condition to relationships.
Exploring themes is nothing new for Amos — on 2002’s Scarlet’s Walk she explored her American Indian heritage. While she is the daughter of a Methodist minister, religion was not necessarily at the forefront when she began crafting songs for The Beekeeper.
“Sometimes the songs have to start visiting me and I have to start composing before I really know what the subject matter is going to be,” she said from New York during a phone interview. “I didn’t start out to have that minister’s daughter in me rise out of the ashes and become an important voice in this work. It wasn’t something I initially planned out.”
The idea to focus on religion came to Amos while in her home in Cornwall, England. She began exploring religious texts and became concerned with how the interpretation of some texts can lead to violence.
Throughout her career, Amos has been a feminist voice in the male-dominated pop music world. Upon its release last month, The Beekeeper debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard Top 200. To date, Amos has sold more than 12 million records worldwide.
“Intensity is something that I like to play with in different forms. Sometimes it’s within the rhythm doing different time — changes and challenging rhythms like with ‘Barons in Suburbia’ (a track on The Beekeeper) — or in the lyric content and subject matter itself,” she said. “I wanted to create a work where the content was ferocious and the sound was seductive and would draw you in.”
Amos said her lyrics are often meant to be taken at face value, but many of the songs on The Beekeeper have veiled meanings when listened to closely. One of those songs is the duet “The Power of Orange Knickers.”
“It was irresistible, the idea of having a guy’s voice on ‘The Power of Orange Knickers.’ I just adored having [Damien Rice] saying the words ‘the power of orange knickers,’ said Amos. “It had to be done. I just put it out there and he came down on the train. It was really effortless.”
