Tori Amos
Where: DAR Constitution Hall, 1776 D St. NW
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Info: $45; ticketmaster.com
Tori Amos hesitates more than a few beats when asked if “Welcome to England,” the first release off her new album “Abnormally Attracted to Sin,” is a love song to her husband.
As fans of Amos know, the red-haired singer/songwriter who is to piano what Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull is to flutes, left the U.S. for England where she now lives with her husband and their 8-year-old daughter.
“I don’t usually like to answer those questions. I tell everybody it’s just a story,” said Amos. “But yeah, that one is kind of obvious. It is.”
For an artist who puts so much of her personal life and soul into her songs, Amos is remarkably hesitant to analyze them publicly, preferring instead to let the listener interpret. That is sometimes a great task because Amos’ songs — like the artist herself — is multi-layered. In the case of this song, it also embodies the feelings of moving away from your country and the risk of losing pieces of yourself in that process unless you make a stand. That, of course, is something Amos has done her entire life.
A child prodigy, Amos was playing piano at age 2 in her Baltimore home. By the time she was 5, she was composing music at her family’s new home in Rockville. Her time on a full scholarship at Peabody Conservatory of Music was cut short because Amos made a stand for herself and noted her preference for rock and popular music.
The setback couldn’t impact her talent and opportunities continued as her 1992 breakout album “Little Earthquakes” put Amos on the charts.
Although Amos admits that her 1998 marriage to Mark Hawley influenced her to move her music to a more medium ground.
Gone — for the most part — are the introspective musical probes that detailed such personal terrain as her rape (“Me and a Gun”) and pain after cruel loves taunted her (“Precious Things”) . Instead Amos’ latest songs — which still focus on her topic staples of religion, sexuality, and abandon — focus more observationally.
Consider the album’s title track which cautions one not to enter a church despite the siren call of nearby pussy willows — “Don’t go in if you are abnormally attracted to sin.”
That’s not to say her musical partnership has doused her emotions and high-charging creativity. Quite the opposite. No one’s going to say Amos, now age 45, has mellowed arguably least of all Hawley.
“When you’re collaborating with somebody in a creative way, you won’t always agree and get along,” she said. “That situation is sexy and inspired É And of course Mark and I have our own thing. Our relationship is very private. I need a real private side because by songs are so open, so personal.”
