ChartAttack.com posted a review of Tori's August 13, 2003 concert in Toronto, Ontario on the web on August 18, 2003.

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Many thanks to Woj for bringing this to my attention. You can read this press concert review online at ChartAttack.com or below:



LIVE: Tori Amos with Ben Folds
Monday August 18, 2003 @ 05:00 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

Molson Amphitheatre
Toronto, Ontario
August 13, 2003
by Heather Kearney

Tori Amos runs a tight ship. Ben Folds took the Molson Amphitheatre stage at exactly 7:04 p.m. and Amos ran off it, following her second encore, at 11 p.m. on the dot. The stuff in between was just really great piano rock.

Billed as the "Lottapianos Tour," the nice thing about a Tori Amos/ Ben Folds crowd is that they genuinely appreciate great musicianship. So you don't stand for most of the show, so there's not a lot of jumping up and down and dancing. maybe the sitting helps you concentrate on the true artistry possible on rock's most overlooked instrument. the piano.

Amos can take the piano from raucous and thunderous to sweet and music box-like within a matter of bars. And there's just something about being able to play more than one keyboard simultaneously that seems infinitely more impressive than some roadie appearing from the wings to switch off guitars.

Emerging onstage in white flowing robes lit up by a bright white spotlight, Amos achieved a fairly good mix of old and new to keep the fans happy. She performed six tracks from 2002's Scarlet's Walk, the album she was, of course, there to promote, and an array of vintage Tori, opting to completely ignore 1998's From The Choirgirl Hotel.

Crowd favourites included: "A Sorta Fairytale," "Little Earthquakes," "God," "Bells For Her," "Cornflake Girl," "I Can't See New York," "Precious Things," and her grand finale, "Hey Jupiter."

Undoubtedly she put on a good show. She played for over two hours. A half hour of that was her two encores, and the congregation still wasn't ready to let her go.

I was though. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was the frustration of trying to decode what she was saying; maybe it was that I've been out of the Tori scene for too long, or maybe it was that the guy beside me was SO into it that it was distracting, but there was something about this performance that failed to engage.

Ben Folds, on the other hand, deserves an honourable mention for engagement. Despite the fact that, due to the early hour, people took their seats throughout his entire performance, Folds had the audience absolutely involved. Performing completely solo, he commissioned the audience to do call and response to fill in for the horn section on "Army" and he taught the crowd the three-part harmony for "Not The Same." The highlight of the show was most definitely during "Steven's Last Night In Town," where Folds performed an all-out drum solo while a drum kit was built around him, only to be deconstructed again as soon as the solo was over.

So while one cannot overlook Tori Amos' immense talent, when it came to showmanship, Ben Folds stole the show.