Tori Amos - Spring Haze (Live in New York, Dec 2011)
So, she followed ‘Hey Jupiter’ which I posted earlier today with this at the show. This section of the show ran ‘Snow Cherries From France’ > ‘Hey Jupiter’ > ‘Spring Haze’ > ‘Cruel’. I’m a huge fan of using songs to create a narrative arc, both on LPs and in a live context (especially in a live context where you can re-order at will, and augment with back catalogue tracks). When I saw this being live tweeted, I kind of lost it a little and stopped calling it the “Night of Hunters” tour, and (thanks to Shags) started calling it the “Night of Haters” tour, because I couldn’t be there (and don’t get me started on her second LA show that tour).
Also, ‘Spring Haze’ is one of my all time favourite songs of hers - the first time I heard it live (in 2005) I was the embarrassing screamer ruining the hypothetical bootleg. The quartet arrangement here does it absolute justice. Sometimes listening to a live recording isn’t interesting unless you were there. This is absolutely not the case here.
Tori Amos - Hey Jupiter (Live in New York, Dec 2011)
I was going to write about the evolution of this song as it has been performed live, but really, the only important thing is that it has reached this point, where it is being performed on the original piano, with the additional ‘Dakota Version’ lyrics, accompanied by a string quartet.
