TORONTO -- The irony was not lost on anyone, least of all Tori Amos herself.

Touring with a full band for the first time, Amos delivered what was quite possibly both the loudest and most intimate performance any music fan is likely to witness this year.

More accurately, Amos and her AUDIENCE delivered on the intimate part.

The crowd of undyingly loyal devotees that packed the Phoenix Concert Theatre, Tuesday night proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no performer anywhere who commands as responsive a fan base as Amos does.

This in spite of the fact that almost half of her 16-song, 100-minute set -- the sole Canadian stop on a two-week club tour leading up to next week's release of her fourth solo album, "from the choirgirl hotel" -- consisted of material that virtually no one in the audience has heard yet.

Six of the 16 songs were drawn from that album, while a seventh -- a poignant new track called "Cooling" -- has been released only in Europe as a B-side to her current single, "Spark". It is entirely typical of Amos's audience that she performed the song because someone in the crowd REQUESTED it.

Though there has been some concern among hardcore fans that the ineffable bond between Amos and her fans would be damaged by the "intrusion" of a full band, that scenario never materialized.

In fact, the evening's highlights included jagged, in-your-face overhauls of favorites like "Horses", "The Waitress", and "God", the latter of which featured a sly quote from a most unlikely source: The Gap Band's 1982 hit, "You Dropped A Bomb On Me".

Of the new material, both "Northern Lad" and the stunning "Jackie's Strength" -- the latter inspired in part by Jackie Kennedy and introduced as being "about a girl getting lost on her wedding day" -- packed even more of an emotional wallop than the recorded versions.

Not that every number was pounded into submission. The three-piece band features a sterling rhythm section of ex-Pearl Jam drummer Matt Chamberlain and San Francisco jazz bassist Jon Evans, plus guitarist Steve Caton, who has been with Amos since the days of her ill-fated '80s hair band, Y Kant Tori Read.

That combination was nimble enough to take the "Boys For Pele" track "Doughnut Song" and make it sound far more witty than it does on record.

Still, the high point for many of the faithful was undoubtedly the all-too-brief, two-song solo set Amos dropped into the middle of the show.

Playfully shooing the band off stage, she reeled off absolutely spellbinding renditions of "Mother" and "Baker Baker".

Once the band returned for the last half-dozen numbers, you could almost sense the ache of knowing that, no matter how powerful Amos's music sounds on stage in 1998, something intangible had disappeared forever.