Tori Amos's Holiday Spin

Photo: Nicole Horton

Last night SPIN magazine invited one hundred lucky guests to their downtown NYC office to catch an intimate SPINHouse Live performance by Tori Amos. The mini-concert had diehard fans of the singer-songwriter milling about the Spin lobby hoping the stone-faced clipboard-clutching PR gatekeepers would grant them admission to the secret show, but they were out of luck as the room was already filled to the brim with hipsters guzzling New Castles and munching mini-cupcakes and Cheetos before the beloved piano banshee took to the tiny stage.

Amos played a six-song set opening with "Ophelia" from 2009's Abnormally Attracted To Sin (kind of a weird choice to get a party started, but hey, what did I expect? "Who Let The Dogs Out"?) followed by "Wednesday" from 2002's Scarlet's Walk  and four songs from her new "seasonal" (read light on the x-mas, heavy on the solstice) album, Midwinter Graces: "A Silent Night With You" (a catchy original new tune with some fairly unforgivable lyrics like "Joy to the world, your arms kept me warm / Night after night, in such a cold world"), "Star of Wonder" ("We Three Kings" given a Middle Eastern make over), "Pink and Glitter" (another original song the concept of which almost feels like "Muhammad My Friend" part two) and another original, "Snow Angel."

The show was short but sweet -- especially because it's rare to see Tori playing in such a tiny venue -- and we were happily dazed in our sugar-salt-booze-music coma as we emptied out of SPIN and into the bright winter lights of Canal street.

For more on Tori's Holiday performance at the SPIN offices, head to SPIN.com.

Also, head to Out.com in the coming days to see an exclusive two-part interview with Tori where she talks about songs she'll never play again, the beef she never had with Lady Gaga, what she would do to Jennifer Aniston if Tori was a man, and more.

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