Amos Enchants With Songs Born of Pain

There is a sweetness to Tori Amos’ voice that belies the bleak elements of her songs. Her pristine vocal range, which has led to favorable comparisons with Kate Bush, Joni Mitchell and Ricki Lee Jones, is so intoxicating that at times it’s easy to forget that she’s singing songs about rape, abuse and the downfall of religious icons.

At her concert Thursday evening at the Rosemont Theatre – the first of two consecutive sold-out nights there – Amos turned the pain of some of her experiences into sheer joy for the enraptured audience.

If there’s anything Amos is more famous for than her haunting voice, it’s her sensual piano playing. On some numbers, such as the evening’s first encore, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” she delicately flirts with the keys as she perfectly matches the vibrato of the higher keys to her voice. But more often than not, she’s straddling the bench, banging out her tortured emotions with wild abandon.

Amos is touring to support her current CD, “Boys for Pele” – Pele referring to the Hawaiian volcano goddess to whom young men were sacrificed, not the soccer legend. The theme that ties this album together is men – or rather men with whom Amos has had failed relationships.

With lesser talents, this subject matter could have turned into a bitter hatefest (Are you listening, Alanis?). But Amos adds subtle nuances, whispering a thought here, before wailing out the impassioned response she knew would be coming.

The daughter of a minister, Amos minces no words cutting down the rhetoric of what she believes are the injustices of a patriarchal society. Some of her material is harrowing. One of Amos’ last songs of the evening was an a cappella rendition of “Me and a Gun.” The song, which details her rape a few years ago, was made all that much more bittersweet by her almost whispered rendition.

The barren stage suited Amos well. With the exception of guitarist Steve Caton (who played on all of Amos’ albums, including the awful 1980s project “Y Kant Tori Read?”), Amos served as her own accompaniment, switching between the grand piano and the grandiose harpsichord she lovingly referred to as a “girl.”

Any parents who wants their unwilling kids to keep on taking piano lessons should take them to an Amos concert. Her “cool” factor will sway them.