Amos’ Ferocious Intensity Rises Above Convention

Tori Amos believes in faeries, sings about sacrificing boys to the Hawaiian volcano goddess Pele and plays a 200-year-old harpsichord. Given all that, you might expect her to sashay onto a stage like an out-of-time wood nymph.

But opening a three-night run at the Greek Theatre on Friday, the singer wore casual jeans and T-shirt and greeted the crowd as if she were playing a recital in a friend’s living room. And she is much more than a unicorn-embracing anachronism. Her songs carried the urgency of the most timely post-punk.

The Methodist minister’s daughter from Maryland was embraced by a cult-like following when she released the intensely personal album “Little Earthquakes” in 1992. In concert, she gained notice for her highly sensual, bench-straddling approach to the piano. With 1994’s “Under the Pink,” she gained the respect of the Alternative Nation, even though she brought classical know-how to Beatles-esque pop.

On Friday, it was her unresolved childhood, and not her unusual hybrid of Bach and rock, that generated the raw brutality and transcendental quality of her work. Lyrically, Amos focused on a strange feminism centered on a perpetual struggle to be free from a stringent family.

She walked onto the stage to a recording of Aretha Franklin’s “Son of a Preacher Man” and told a story about going to church with her family and, disturbed by the “nasally Methodist singing,” refused to sing to those “snotty angels.”

To battle her demons, Amos called on a slew of ferocious, womanly muses for vocal inspiration, from Billie Holiday’s sensual clutch to Sinead O’Connor’s banshee yowl, from PJ Harvey’s bluesy cry to the supernatural drama of Kate Bush.

The muses were in effect for “Cornflake Girl”--inspired by a Toni Morrison book on female genital mutilation, though you’d never know it from its veiled lyrics--and “God,” both from 1993’s “Under the Pink.”

In contrast, the music on the current “Boys for Pele” is much denser and more interesting. Amos (playing virtually solo, with occasional support from a guitarist) delivered it with so much strange passion that she crumbled into dissonance, lingered a little too long on pauses and turned her coo into a “grrrr.” The discomfort was all part of the act. “Caught a Lite Sneeze” and the slow, bluesy “Little Amsterdam” more closely resembled disturbing operettas than easily digestible pop songs.

“Pele” material aside, the highlight of the evening was a gut-wrenching, a cappella version of “Me and a Gun,” a chronicle of her real-life rape, re-imagined with Amos in charge.

This unconventional artist refused to fit into any of her quick media portrayals. The goofy Wiccan was a centered performer, the writhing vixen didn’t offer a single gratuitous gesture. When she is at her best, as she was during this economical show, Amos brings the ferocity of the best blues and rock to her music. The transcendent thrall of Led Zeppelin and the fiery melodiousness of Kurt Cobain’s guitar resonated from the keyboards of her Bosendorfer piano and her ancient harpsichord.