Music
20 Apr 26

Live Report: Tori Amos at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin

Tori Amos at Bord Gais Energy Theatre on April 19th, 2026. Copyright Jason Doherty/www.hotpress.com

Ahead of the release of her 18th studio album, In Times of Dragons, Tori Amos brings her largest European tour in a decade to Dublin

Tori Amos – her body angled in that iconic stance, between her Bösendorfer grand piano and stack of keyboards, one hip shading the wood, one foot anchoring her, the other shifting – imparts the ghastly portent:

Southern girls know what it means
When the patriarchy menacingly says
You shush yourself down now
You put a finger on those beautiful lips
We both know what they're good for, don't we?

It's from ‘Shush’, the second single off her forthcoming album, the hugely anticipated In Times of Dragons, a metaphorical story about the fight for Democracy over Tyranny. The horror show creep of it is marvellous, buttressed by the doom-laden deep end of long-time collaborators Jon Evans on bass and Earl Harvin on drums – their artistry superb throughout – and her beyond beguiling chorus of backing singers (Liv Gibson, Deni Hlavinka and Hadley Kennary) Amos’ self-titled posse of Angel Witches.

The Bord Gáis Energy Theatre audience, who mind you were on their feet from the off, erupt in extolment and exhalation of their hero. Aye, it’s a gig like no other, how could it be any other way? For Tori Amos is an artist of immense artistic depth and originality. ‘Horses’ unfolds less like song, rather like giant Rousseau canvas – dense, dreamlike and slightly off in proportion. Tonight, Amos sleds it across the icy quarters of the eighty-eight, reminding the listener that she shares more than a little DNA with the recently passed, legendary Moya Brennan of Clannad.

‘Don’t Make Me Come to Vegas’ is something else entirely, at times surf rock, at others a minimalist industrial workout, a brief glimpse of exquisite Beach Boys here, a hypnotic work out worthy of Bach there – but all descriptors keel to “pure Tori”. After all, introducing ‘Crazy’, she relates that her collaborator on her forthcoming record, is none other than Lugh, yes, he of the Long Arm, master of all arts and king of the Tuatha Dé Danann – we’re not in easily explained territory here which is beyond magic.

‘Your Cloud’ is a psychedelic, dream pop gem of colossal space, while ‘Bells for Her’ jettisons Tori off into deep space, the expanse of it exquisite. Her Number 1 fan tonight, a beaming seven-year-old girl requests ‘Josephine’ and Tori presents it, taking us back to early nineteenth century Russia, to the twelve hundred spires of a burning Moscow. Chapeau!

The sextet courageously tackle The Civil Wars’ ‘Poison & Wine’ for the first time in the live cauldron and infuse it with the most precious of harmonies, Tori blowing little kisses to the crowd at song’s end. ‘Mary’ attests that Amos could own daytime radio without breaking a sweat – if she had any interest in playing the game but before we get any ideas, into the interstellar of ‘Black Dove (January)’ she takes us in her sonic rocket-ship to the other side of the galaxy.

The Hammond heave of ‘Witness’ and all its talk of petrol emotions has us jiving in the stalls, before Tori unfurls a quarter hour of mammoth ‘Crucify’ and is gone, before returning to bowl us over with ‘Body and Soul’ and showstopper ‘Cornflake Girl’.

The ultimate Trojan horse? “You bet your life it is..."