A rainy Friday night was enlivened by the return of hometown heroine (and Richard Montgomery High alumni — Go, uhm…Rockets! Right? Y’all are the Rockets?) Tori Amos, who took to the DAR Constitution Hall armed with her giant black Bösendorfer piano, her touring band, and a new record. That record, American Doll Posse, is an odd sort of concept album revolving around a bunch of different characters that Amos invented, costumed, and, I believe, even gave blogs. So, it’s a little bit like the career of Ryan Avent. I’m just glad the record is better than her last, The Beekeeper, which sounded like a bland stab for adult contemporary radio airplay.

I’ll readily admit that I do not have the fullest grasp of the underlying conceit of ADP, so, we’ll leave it to my wife to explain:

American Doll Posse is a response to the war in Iraq, along with other worldly disasters. Rather than just Tori singing the songs, she has enlisted the help of four “other singers,” each with her own views and personalities, to fill out the album. The other singers are, in fact, aspects of Tori’s own self. (It’s interesting to note that the album, while listing the various characters’ names for the vocals, always credits the Bösendorfer playing to Tori Amos. No one but herself touches the precious Bösey, not even manifestations of her own mind.)

Why does this matter? Because Tori has been carrying this conceit over into her live show, where one of the “characters” opens each show with a five-or-six song set of her own. In our case, the blonde-wigged documentarian “Isabel” came out to play, and I’m told that this makes sense because she’s the most overtly “political” of the personalities, and, appropriately, opened the show with “Yo George” on the record. I’m guessing you don’t have to have a degree in semiotics to know who that song is about. Honestly, the whole character thing, it didn’t necessarily add much to the goings-on. Besides a wig, I mean.