Introverted But Willing To Discuss Tori Amos

Buckle up and set the sat nav to hell, because today we have the tremendous pleasure of diving deep with Deni Hlavinka one-third of the trio that became one of the defining sounds of Tori Amos’s In Times of Dragons tour: the Angel Witches. One of the things we all loved most about this tour was getting to watch the Angels find their place in the show in real time. Admittedly, none of us really knew what this new vocal configuration was going to be like - or what it might become. But little by little, their voices started weaving themselves into the fabric of the songs-adding new textures, new tension, new beauty - until by the end of the tour it was hard to imagine this chapter of Tori’s live show without them. And that’s why, of course, we’ve collectively been so curious about the women behind those voices. Deni studied professional music at Berklee College of Music, where she was taught and mentored by Grammy-winning artist Paula Cole. While she was there, she met guitarist Chris West, and the two went on to form The Western Den, a project built around lush arrangements, intricate harmonies, and the kind of close attention to sound that still runs through Deni’s soundscapes. Oh and she liked Chris enough to make him her husband. Deni now makes music under the name Fire Swimmer, her electronic-pop solo project. It takes much of what she does so beautifully — layered vocals, emotional intimacy, atmosphere — and pushes them into a darker, more synth-driven world. And after spending months hearing her voice become part of Tori’s songs, it’s especially fascinating, and deeply rewarding, to hear what transpires when Deni gets to build a musical world entirely of her own. So today, we’re talking about how she found her way onto the stage with Tori, what it’s like to step inside songs that people have loved and lived with for decades, how the Angel Witches learned to sing together as a unit, and what life looks like behind the scenes when you’re taking a show like this around the world.

We went looking for dragons. We found them. We followed them. We argued about them. And now we’re finally ready to talk about what the hell just happened. On this episode of Introverted But Willing to Discuss Tori Amos, we’re wrapping up the In Times of Dragons tour– talking about the songs, the setlists, the surprises, the transcendent moments, and the occasional decision that left us with… some thoughts. What made this tour so remarkable was Tori’s refusal to simply revisit the past. She reimagined it. Night after night, songs we’ve lived with for years were given new shapes, new textures, and entirely new emotional dimensions. Familiar became unfamiliar. Songs we thought we knew inside and out suddenly had somewhere else to go. And a huge part of that transformation came from Liv Gibson, Deni Hlavinka, and Hadley Kennary. These three extraordinary voices brought new color and dimension to the songbook. The Angel Witches didn’t simply add harmonies. They became part of the architecture of these performances, making songs we’ve known for decades feel newer and more vivid than we ever imagined. They became an intrinsic part of this chapter of the Tori Amos songbook and now, inevitably, part of the mythology. And then there was everything happening beyond the stage. Because the other great gift of a Tori tour is the people. The Tori community showed up in force. Strangers became seat mates, seat mates became friends, online friendships became real-life reunions. Many of these relationships go back over 30 years. We shared meals, rides, theories, memories, hugs, and, frankly, an unreasonable number of wildly divergent opinions. That human connection is part of what makes this music matter. And it made these shows better. So now we’re taking one last look at In Times of Dragons: the reinvention, the revelations, the voices that helped reshape the songs, and the people who made the experience bigger than any one night in any one theater. The tour is over. But if there’s one thing Tori has taught us, it’s that a song is never finished just because we think we know it. Apparently, neither are we. Shush serpent tongue 🐍 at 8:15-8:25: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7JrEfDuMBM&t=788s

On this episode we are leaping headfirst into Pandora's Aquarium and having it out over the absolute embarrassment of riches that are Tori's opening and closing album tracks, which are routinely considered some of the strongest and most significant work on their respective records. Tori, when asked about sequencing albums in a 2012 interview with The Quietus: "I'm always looking at things as albums, not as something that people pull a track off of. I'm looking at the complete work. The fluidity of moving from one to the other—I've always thought that was really essential. Being able to sit there and put the album on and have an experience." (2012) Every Tori album begins with a promise. Sometimes an invitation. Sometimes a warning. Sometimes a slap across the face. And by the time the record ends, she's left us either inspired, devastated, enlightened, beguiled, catatonic... or perhaps all of the above. Tonight we're putting those bookends to the test. Now that In Times of Dragons has given us opening and closing songs I think we're pretty comfortable calling instant classics, we've decided to rank every opening track and every closing track from Tori's full-length studio albums of original, non-seasonal material. This isn't necessarily about the best songs. It's about the art of opening the door to another world and knowing exactly how and when to leave it. Can an explosive opener beat a slow-burning masterpiece? Is the perfect closer the one that offers resolution and ties a bow on the preceding 60–85 minutes? Or should a closer be one serpentine, provocative question mark that leaves us wanting more, needing desperately to start the album over again to discover new clues and figure out how what started out as a pretty good year ended in a little earthquake? As always, we've brought our lists, our arguments, and our deeply held opinions that are all pretty much guaranteed to change again next week.... So, get out your parasol because you'll need to protect yourself from all the gold dust we'll be slinging. Too much? Hmm. Oh well. You’ll soon find it’s not a democracy on this pod, HONEY. Opening tracks ranked: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0uVBgx1CPqfV4hBDccklr7?si=9Q-4Av0TTEiaPzesdvGv7w&utm_source=copy-link&pi=W7sc52dkQZO3Q Closing tracks ranked: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6BMKhpQBb33FkfIV7lrivq?si=uCOGLHiEQKCQ4X2Y5n5RMg&utm_source=copy-link&pi=VY8P5A-LQt6wP

Sometimes the longest journeys can begin with the performance of a single live song. Over the course of a few unforgettable days, we traced the song lines through New Orleans, Austin, Dallas, and Nashville. We crossed state lines and time zones. We traded highways for own ways and back again, following a trail of songs that have been traveling beside us some for decades. All of this unfolds nightly across cities and theater aisles and airport terminals and hotel lobbies, over late night meals and early morning departures, and spans Michelin star restaurants to hot dogs on the streets before bed. It's where familiar songs reveal new emotional landscapes, where strangers become friends, where old friends find each other again, and where the music quietly reminds us that we're part of something much larger than ourselves. Each city carried its own atmosphere, its own heartbeat, its own conversation with the music that filled the room. Somewhere in between the anticipation, the reunions, the laughter, the long drives, and the delayed flights that stitched this past week together, we found something that we treasure every time we're lucky enough to do this. The chance for us to be together. So by the end of days like these, you stop remembering which city held what song. What you remember is the feeling of choosing some chasing something beautiful from one horizon to the next. So tonight we're looking back on The first four shows that we attended of the In Times of Dragons US tour. And we're not here to rank the performances or settle on definitive favorites, but we're here to just trace the threads that connected everything, the surprises that stayed with us, the listeners we finally met, and old friends that we embraced and the quiet realization that this music continues to bring us back to each other and through that back to Tori. So please join us as we retrace the song lines as they sing.

It's happening!! 🤩 With Tori's 2026 U.S. tour kicking off in less than 48 hours, we're in full pre-tour geek mode. In this special tour-eve episode, we're answering your listener questions —mostly about the tour— plus a handful of fun surprises. Come join the frenzied excitement, the wild speculation, and the joyful anticipation. Let's GO! ❤️🎹

We are gay gasping in excitement as we celebrate Pride month by having a much needed - and much requested - dialogue about Tori’s passionate, lifelong relationship with and connection to the queer community. As if that weren’t SINsual enough, we have the absolute delight and privilege of doing so by welcoming true Renaissance Man, Very Famous Homosexual, and most importantly, staunch Toriphile, John Arthur Hill to the podcast. Chances are you already know John - either from his wickedly funny social media presence, or from his Sirius Radio shows The John Hill Show and Andy Cohen Live , or perhaps you’ve been fortunate enough to catch his iconic standup musical Wellness Check , which traces his journey from being a teenage country singer at Six Flags in San Antonio Texas, to Broadway, and, of course, to SiriusXM. Along the way, he performs original songs at the piano and shares stories from every chapter of his life. Some of his most celebrated compositions include The Same Five Gays; Careful With The Mics; CrossBody Gay; and an X-rated country song that got him banned from TikTok and must be seen live to be fully appreciated. Broadway fans will know him from roles in The Boy From Oz , where he also understudied Hugh Jackman, as well as part of the original Broadway cast of Hairspray . Behind the scenes, John has built an impressive television career as a writer and producer on shows including Watch What Happens Live, Project Runway, Top Chef, and, in case you missed the 32 other times I mentioned he was gay, Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List . Later this July you can find John in Provincetown - we hear he’s gonna see some Bears there! - debuting his brand new show Silk and Loose - which we cannot wait to hear ALL about. So, please join us in conversation with John Arthur Hill!

In this savory and sweet episode of Introverted but Willing to Discuss Tori Amos, we are joined by Timothy Pakron, cookbook author, photographer, food stylist, recipe architect, gardener, and the creative force behind Mississippi Vegan. Timothy’s acclaimed cookbook Mississippi Vegan reimagines Southern, Cajun, and Creole cuisine through a plant-based lens, with recipes rooted in the food, land, traditions, and family stories of his Mississippi Gulf Coast childhood. His work celebrates place, memory, beauty, queerness, ritual, and the ever-evolving idea of comfort. But behind all that lush, edible magic is something else we obviously needed to discuss: Timothy is a huge Tori Amos fan. In this conversation, we talk about his personal Tori origin story, the songs and performances that shaped him, and the creative world he has built through food, gardening, music, and self-making. We also get into the full-circle magic of Timothy’s forthcoming book Garden Variety being endorsed by none other than Tori herself — a moment that feels less like “famous person liked my book” and more like an artist who helped shape Timothy’s inner world finding her way into something he created from that very world. Using Timothy’s special Garden Variety-inspired YouTube playlist as our guide, we wander through gardens, kitchens, songs, sensuality, Southernness, memory, and the strange little portals that open when music, food, and creative devotion meet. Join us as we show you the things you’ve been missing, show you the ways you forgot to be speaking, and show you the ways to get back to the garden. Mississippi Vegan instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mississippivegan/ Timothy's Garden Variety playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwpcDMwM6mqjq9stvIPBa5c25kYUglMDg&si=wxNxzAbIdjzn1u8q Tori Amos offers quarantine comfort with a recipe for vegan mushroom stew: https://www.npr.org/2020/05/04/849110966/tori-amos-offers-quarantine-comfort-with-a-recipe-for-vegan-mushroom-stew

Welcome to all of our sonic librarians and album archivists! In this episode we are doing something extremely dangerous to our reputations in the Tori fandom, and maybe even with Tori herself… We are ranking the albums. AAHHHHHHhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Before anyone lights a candle circle around their #1 album and starts sending nasty messages, this is not definitive, objective, or scientific Tori scholarship. This is just three longtime fans having fun and seeing where our hearts land right now, in this particular moment, because honestly In Times of Dragons has scrambled our brains a little bit. The new album has us realizing some albums have quietly climbed the ranks while others maybe hit us differently than they used to. And this new one came crashing in. To be clear: this isn’t about declaring “the best” Tori Amos album. It’s about where these records live for us right now, what’s grown with us. Will we contradict ourselves? Absolutely. Will we offend somebody by ranking their favorite at the bottom? Completely. But that’s part of the fun. As a wise woman once said, “if it’s too loud turn it up” and we’re going to do just that. So unzip your religion, lower your expectations for objectivity, and let’s rank some Tori Amos albums! RANKED LIST ***SPOILER*** * * * * * * 16 Midwinter Graces 15 The Beekeeper 14 Ocean to Ocean 13 Unrepentant Geraldines 12 Abnormally Attracted to Sin 11 Night of Hunters 10 Little Earthquakes 9 American Doll Posse 8 Strange Little Girls 7 In Times of Dragons 6 To Venus and Back 5 Boys for Pele 4 Under the Pink 3 Scarlet’s Walk 2 Native Invader 1 From the Choirgirl Hotel

We’re joined today by John Philip Shenale. AGAIN! What a compliment. JPS is a producer, composer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist, and one of Tori Amos’ most essential longtime creative collaborators. He’s been behind some of the most defining sonic worlds in her catalog for decades. In this episode, we go deep into 23 Peaks , the closing track from In Times of Dragons . And while we don’t seek to be completist or archivist with this look at 23 Peaks, we know that people want more. This song is not really just a song. It feels more like crossing a threshold into an entirely new world. Ethereal, devastating, cinematic, cathartic, hopeful. And already one of the most talked-about, deeply felt moments in the Tori Amos catalog, even though we’ve only held this song in our hands for merely 2 official weeks. Listen to our Q&A with John Philip Shenale on 23 Peaks.

This is a truly momentous occasion as we bring you an exclusive track by track review of Tori’s long awaited new album - her first in 5 years - In Times of Dragons , which imagines another woman we’ll call Tori escaping the clutches of her Peter Thiel-quoting, billionaire “Lizard Demon” husband and going on a literal and metaphysical journey to both reconnect with her estranged daughter and seek help from a circle of Dragon Queens to remove the blade-like scales growing from her spine before ultimately realizing her destiny is indeed to give herself over to the Ancient Order and accept her transformation into a dragon herself. I know. But trust us. It’s really fucking good. Allegory aside, this is one of the most revealing, insightful, and probing records of Tori’s career, each track asking unflinching questions of The Self, like how we did we get ourselves into this nightmarish political quicksand and how we will collectively join forces to pull ourselves out? It also finds Tori confronting her own mortality, her evolving vocal prowess, and what it means to compose in decomposing times. So, snap the throttle, light a candle for St Teresa, and gaze out at the Strawberry Moon while we dive deep into a bold new chapter of The Tori Amos Songbook, In Times of Dragons.

Calling all of our fellow setlist scholars and lounge lizards 🦎 👩‍🏫 🎹 We hear and feel your palpable excitement about Tori on tour right now, and honestly, we are still geeking out in real time as the setlists roll in each night too. So we thought we’d keep capturing that magic and excitement. Tonight, each of us has picked five songs that we desperately want to see Tori perform on the In Times of Dragons tour. As of now, a few shows in, none of these have appeared in the setlist yet—and we haven’t shared our picks with each other, so we’ll all unzip our religion down together. We’re going to loudly -perhaps delusionally- campaign for these songs, and maybe you can help us shout em from the rooftops in Tori’s direction along the way. Let’s close our eyes and imagine together what these fifteen songs could become—especially now that we have three insanely talented background vocalists adding layers and dimension in a way we’ve never really heard before. So buckle up, girls and boys, ’cause we’re driving the setlist tonight. If Jon Evans ever needs a night off as Musical Director, give us a ring…we’re cheap, cute and ready to go!

Welcome to Introverted but Willing to Discuss Tori Amos — the podcast for quiet thinkers, deep listeners, and anyone who has ever had a life moment soundtracked by a Tori Amos song. On Episode 3, Kristen, Matt and Joey discuss something that lives somewhere between ritual and road trip: Tori Amos on tour. Because a Tori tour isn’t just a series of concerts — it’s a living, breathing, moving cultural conversation. Songs shift, setlists breathe, old tracks reappear in new emotional colors, and every night becomes its own little universe. Whether you’ve followed Tori across cities and continents, caught a single unforgettable show, or watched the magic unfold from afar, touring is where the songs evolve — and where the stories begin. So in true introvert fashion, we’ll ease into it: the anticipation, the travel, the setlist surprises, the quiet community that forms in theater seats around the world, and what it feels like when those first piano notes hit the room and everything starts to vibrate. Tonight, on the eve of the In Times of Dragons world tour launch, we pre-game our version of the Super Bowl: Tori Amos on tour!

On our 2nd episode of season 3, we have the pleasure and privilege of being joined by the one and only Rod Thomas, better known as the iconique Bright Light, Bright Light, an artist, songwriter, producer, and DJ who has released five studio albums since 2012, his most recent being the UK top 10 selling Enjoy Youth from 2024. While being a fully independent artist, he has recorded with some of the music's biggest names, including Sir Elton John, Scissor Sisters, Justin Vivian Bond, Erasure, Madonna's backing singers, Nikki and Donna, and Ultra Naté. He has also toured the world as the opening act for Elton, Erasure, Ellie Goulding, and queen icon legend Cher. His love of 80s and 90s pop culture shines in his cinematic, colorful dance pop music, his remixes, and his DJ sets ranging from his weekly tea dance in New York City to Prides around the world and prestigious US institutions, MoMA and the Smithsonian. Most importantly, he is a self professed and very public Toriphile! And there's truly no one better than to deep dive Tori's fascinating and seemingly contradictory, but perhaps ultimately fitting relationship to electronica, synth pop and the strange boundless world of the remix. Welcome, welcome, Bright Light Bright Light.

For our Season 3 premiere we are going to zoom in on Tori’s relationship to cinema. I (Matt) have always been inspired by the movies, movies are my earliest memories. They were my first love, my longest relationship and for a long time, my bread and butter. On our season 2 episode featuring JPS JV asked him how he would describe Tori’s music. We see Tori as a great auteur, someone who creates worlds that are cinematic and immersive. In that respect, she is like the Martin Scorsese of singer-songwriters: a director who can handle any genre thrown at him, but still retains a certain quality that is unmistakably his and his alone. To be this kind of artist, at minimum, you have to at least know yourself inside and out and Tori proved with Little Earthquakes that she could articulate everything that was inside of her mind, her heart, her bones. She did this so early in life that she allowed herself the creative freedoms to blend those worlds for the rest of her career, and explore narrative and character in a way very few singer-songwriters have. She became a sonic character actress sure, because she played all of the roles in her songs herself, but, in our view, she truly became a sonic auteur. The listener can see these stories visually as they experience the music sonically. Today we are cataloguing and contextualizing Tori Amos many dalliances with cinema, so no please join us as we launch Season THRAY.

A wise man (not really, it was just Matt Mazur) once said "Tori Amos invented sex," and in this season finale, we’re proving it. Whether she's falling in love in the snow or commanding the piano bench, Tori knows how to turn it up a notch. We’ve got a "DTF" playlist ready for you to enjoy the winter chill that bends. We’re introverted, we’re obsessed, and we’re ready to discuss the steamier side of Tori Amos. One Night Stand: TA DTF playlist

There’s not just one Tori Amos. There’s the mystical Tori. The one who whispers and stirs your soul with a single, dramatically drawn breathy sigh. Ethereal and enchanted. Imagine her as a church choir girl sun, faerie moon and a mermaid rising if you’re into astrology. Then there’s the sensual Tori. The one who moves like honey, undulating on the piano bench, eyes half-closed, turning her microphone into a… lover. Desire and divinity inhabit the same body, and she always finishes on top. ;) And then there’s the Tori who bares her teeth, growls, screams, and slams the keys. You have seen this tori in various forms. She’s the one who famously performed a song about her own assault while gripping a knife on stage. This Halloween, as the veil between worlds grows thin, we’re calling on that Tori– the one who kicked out the lady in the white shirt (does she fucking mind?). Because Scary Tori isn’t a costume. She’s a force of nature- part witch, part warrior- and she’s on a mission. This Tori channels something ancient through her piano and what she finds might even surprise her at times. So today, in honor of the season of shadows, we’re talking about Scary Tori: the power that makes you flinch… and then lean closer.

We are honored to have a producer, composer, arranger, multi-instrumentalist, musical visionary in our presence. He's worked alongside some of the biggest legends in music history, and he also happens to be Tori Amos' longtime write or die right-hand man across many decades and many projects. Most recently, this dynamic duo collaborated on the wildly whimsical soundtrack that accompanies the New York Times best-selling children's book Tori and the Muses, please welcome our friend, the maestro, John Philip Shenale. We've heard you love our list making so we're coming at you with yet another list. This time it's the big one. It's our top 10 favorites list. NOT our best of, NOT our underrated. It's our favorites. So tonight you're in for real treat as we unveil our top tens alongside John Philip Shenale, who will be sharing his top 10 Tori Amos tracks that he did not work on. Maybe with a twist. We'll see. Our favorite top 10 Tori Amos songs: JPS JV KK MM

In this episode, we open the mailbag and dive into your burning questions. Will there be a 2026 tour? Is a new album on the horizon? We share our takes, speculate wildly, and cover the topics you most wanted to hear about.

We’re doing things a bit differently as we welcome our very first guest for a very special episode, where we’ll attempt to scratch the surface of Tori’s complicated relationship with the media over the past three decades. We’ll explore not only how she’s been represented (and misrepresented) by an often unforgiving and unflattering press, but also the ways in which Tori’s intuition and perceptiveness allowed her to have the upper hand, talking circles around and discomfiting her inquisitors, and making clear that she wouldn’t back down from her ideals or be silenced by patriarchal standards - way before it was cool or safe or, let’s be frank, not potentially career-ending to do so. Helping us to tackle this red-hot topic is a written and literal voice many of our listeners will be familiar with, both from the at once provocative and positively silly podcast Pot Psychology and his writing in The New York Times, Pitchfork, The Washington Post, Spin, Jezebel, and Gawker, among other publications. He also co-authors Slate’s sex advice column How to Do It. A true raconteur and renaissance man - Rich Juzwiak! Rich's latter day playlist made with love by Joey, Kristen, and Matt Recent Pitchfork reassessment of Boys for Pele (2025) Q Magazine “Hips. Lips. Tits. Power." (1994) Rolling Stone review of Boys for Pele (1996) Rolling Stone cover story (1998) Tori on Roseanne’s talk show (1998) Tori on Rosie O’Donnell (1999) Tori on the Daily Show (1999) Tori on The View (1999) Rolling Stone Beekeeper review (2004) Stylus review THR Full Oscar Songwriters Roundtable featuring Tori Amos, Justin Timberlake, John Legend, Alicia Keys, Sting (2016) Rick Beato interview (2024)

In this episode, we ponder what it means for a Tori Amos song to be “underrated.” Is “underrated” in this context even something definable? Or is it ultimately subjective and personal to the individual listener? Is a song underrated because Tori rarely or never performs it? Or is it a song that’s been played so many times that we’ve taken it for granted and can no longer hear the genius and the grit that went into its creation? Or perhaps it lives on a latter-day Tori record that’s less celebrated, less heard by the general public? In the spirit of our wildly successful – and a touch controversial – Best of Tori Amos episode, we bring to you The 20 Most Underrated Tori Songs . We repeated our very scientific method of each crafting individual lists of what we believe to be Tori’s most underrated tracks – from proper albums only; no bsides, no soundtracks, no covers, no seasonal music - tallying each song’s respective points and then ranking the ranking them in ascending order. The result is a playlist that spans many - but not all - of Tori’s records, chock full of gags, goops, gogs, and go-figures. Given how underrated we likely all agree Tori is in the broader history of contemporary music, this very episode may be the definition of a fool’s errand. Regardless, in the spirit of the woman we call Tori once calling herself an “ant fucker,” we are Introverted but willing to discuss Tori Amos’ most underrated songs. Playlists: 20 Most Underrated Songs JV KK MM