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! ❤️🎹