interview by Andrzej Lukowski | view as PDF

It’s ninety minutes before the doors for tonight’s gig open and already there’s a ten-metre queue of fans outside. Not an unusual thing in itself; this is the Birmingham Academy, used to playing host to emo acts for whom the average fourteen year old would cheerily disembowel their best mate to get a half inch closer to. But this isn’t an emo crowd, being both older and odder, favouring a uniform of stripy jumpers, stripy stockings and an infeasible number of bowler hats. They’re here to see Bostonian duo The Dresden Dolls, cult cabaret rockers, and, apparently, saviours of the bowler hat industry.

Were the waiting crowds to be let in right now, however, they’d probably be a bit disappointed. Pre-gig, Dresden Dolls singer, songwriter and pianist Amanda Palmer is sans stockings and suspenders; both she and fellow Doll, drummer Brian Viglione, are bowler-free and their trademark whiteface mime make-up is nowhere to be seen. Sporting a battered ensemble of old t-shirt, trousers and boots, the rangy Palmer looks more like a mechanic than somebody who proclaims her stock in trade to be ‘Brechtian punk cabaret’. An inexpensive dye-job aside, the only unusual looking feature is her eyebrows, which for some reason or other she draws on with Maybelline and look bloody odd. Certainly too weird for the waiting hordes to have tried to copy. Speaking in low, earnest tones, she ponders the wannabe Amandas that flock to every Dresden Dolls gig.

“Well that’s was definitely never a plan, oh god no. In fact people have been telling us for years that we should sell stuff like hats at our shows. But Brian and I…well although it’s sort of flattering on one level to see them painting their faces and dressing up like us, in another way we feel they’re missing the point, because it’s not, it’s really not about a look or a style for us, it’s about the ability to be a freak. The sorts of fans that look like the hardcore fans don’t necessarily fit to the mould that we expected.”

This might sound a touch ungrateful, but in truth there are probably few artists who appreciate their fans as much as Amanda Palmer. “I do,” she nods vigorously, “increasingly more so actually, because I take a lot of solace in the fact that people connect with the music, even on days I don’t connect with it, it sort of keeps me afloat sometimes.”

With their evil mime chic, an eponymous debut album of harsh, antsy piano rock, and the underground hits Girl Anachronism (a thrillingly ugly, near industrial two-minute rant) and Coin Operated Boy (an enjoyably kitsch paean to sex toys), Palmer and Viglione would have the makings of a cult act even if they had a rigorous policy of vigorously beating all fans with sharpened sticks. But one peek at their official website shows a band that offers almost unparalleled access: the Dolls invite people to send them items to be signed, to submit art, poetry, photographs, music, to get in touch if you’d like to do performance art at a Dresden Dolls gig. Infamously, Palmer keeps an online diary, an eyebrow-raising stew of neuroses, paranoia and insecurity, the likes of which you probably wouldn’t be overjoyed for your parents to have access to, let alone thousands of fans. It’s understandable why one might think Palmer has invited people to reach in and grab a piece of her identity for themselves.

“I think…it’s all about how you communicate things,” she says slowly. “With the diary, one thing I try really hard not to do is to use it as…well first of all to use it as a weapon, which it really could be, and second of all to use it as a kind of dumping ground for frustration and venting. As long as people remain in touch with the fact that I’m always questioning why I’m even communicating something and that I always remain self-critical and open-minded about the process itself then it can’t be misinterpreted, because I’m sort of the first to criticise myself before anybody else, and with that you basically disarm your worst critics, because they stop having ammo to use against you.”

Er, okay. So in other words her diary’s a bit like the bit in '8 Mile' when Eminem wins by doing a rap about how rubbish he is? “Exactly!” she grins.

From a non-cult perspective, i.e. are the tunes actually any good, The Dresden Dolls’ debut is a pretty qualified success. It has some good songs, but behind the compelling aesthetic, it’s really a tad ropey: the angst is non-specific, contrived even, and while Palmer’s coarse rasp of a voice and pneumatic piano ensures the band has an identity, it’s frequently not a very strong one.

It’s a tad drab next to this year’s sophomore effort, Yes, Virginia. Largely shorn of the guitars that occasionally embellished its predecessor, it’s the product of Palmer refining the Dolls’ core values and coming out with all guns blazing. The piano is cranked up to eleven and frequently battered to within an inch of its life; Viglione bombards his kit with a power and precision that would prompt the average fighter pilot to hang his head in shame. Musically, it’s a big, boisterous, larger-than-life knees-up, like something Andrew Lloyd Webber might come up with after a night on angel dust and Stella. Which would count for very little if she was still croaking away despondently about something or other, but it’s a very different Palmer who dominates this album. Her voice still isn’t pretty, but it is far more potent, a full-blooded, confident roar that nimbly rips through songs that — from the self-explanatory venom of Backstabber, through the delicate domestic abuse ballad Delilah and hymnal closer Sing — aren’t afraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves.

“That’s not imagined,” nods Palmer, “as a performer I have a lot more confidence. We recorded this record after being on the road for fucking three years, and that first record after barely touring at all. So my piano playing is a lot more confident, my vocals are a lot more confident, I’m used to getting up in front of a crowd of 1000 people, whereas that first record was utter paranoia and self-consciousness.”

Of course, making the songs more accessible only serves to beckon fans further in to Palmer-land. But it also invites criticism. The likes of Backstabber and Delilah appear to be nakedly critical of individuals — in the latter, Palmer informs her abused protagonist “You’re an unrescuable schizo / Or else you’re on the rag” — though the singer is evasive about this. “They’re fictional Frankensteins,” she says. “I mean, it’s not like I have an actual friend called Delilah. She’s sort of like a confabulation of people, and myself for that matter. I think songs are like dreams in a way. They say every character in a dream is actually yourself, or an aspect of yourself, and I think you could say the same about being a songwriter.”

Most provocative of all is Sex Changes, the propulsive, giddy romp that opens both the album itself and the band’s live shows. It’s infused with such kinetic gusto that first time around you don’t necessarily notice the lyrics. Second time around lines like “You get your choice of an aesthetic / We’ll need to chop your clock off (tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock) / It might not be what you expected / There is no money back once you’ve been ripped off!” leave an odd taste in the mouth. Seemingly a salvo of scorn against transsexuals, there’s no obligation for Palmer to adopt a positive stance on the issue, but it seems an oddly pointed attack from somebody who proclaims herself friend to the freak. She shakes her head in concern.

“Oh. Uh. No. In fact I got an email about that, some somewhat perturbed fanmail. I think as a certain brand of feminist it can be really incriminating when you come forth with a view that actually seems very conservative on paper, but y’know, I think that people actually should be held responsible for their actions, I think that people really should be educated before they make their decisions, I think that people really should have to think through the consequences of their actions, and there’s a lot on confusion around the entire issue.

That song initially came out of a relationship I had with somebody that was going through a sex change*, it was inspired by that. I’m by no means anti-anything like that. But it certainly did bring up questions about how final those decisions were. And also the song is like a triple entendre, it’s about sex and virginity and abortion, the lyrics are deliberately mixed metaphors and they work very well together.

“I mean you can take a weird stance on anything like that – I’m definitely very pro-choice but I’m also anti-stupid. Like I know plenty of girls who are just having terrible dumb sex, and rape is the same way, I mean it’s this terrible fucking thing but also it can be this terrible weapon used by women, how do you negotiate that? And that’s all wrapped up in the song, that’s wrapped up in a lot of the songs. It was a passing relationship. But it was educational to say the least. But it was definitely a look into a very strange experience that must feel very overwhelming.”

Superficially more controversial still is Mrs O, which features Palmer singing “There’s no hell and no Hiroshima / no Hitler and no holocaust”. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise she’s playing a part, a deluded school teacher lecturing the Virginia of the album’s title. For those not versed in the more arcane elements of US culture, Yes, Virginia is a reference to an editorial in the September 21, 1897 edition of the New York Sun in which a precocious brat’s inquiry into the subject of Father Christmas was met with a long-winded reply that concluded “yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus”.

“The original American letter,” muses Palmer, “it’s sort of like, it would be in the same room of a museum as the Norman Rockwell paintings; it’s like this very schmaltzy, feel-good yet somehow acceptably salt-of-the earth message that gets reprinted in newspapers all over America every Christmas and everyone reads it, and it’s this really emotional thing and it’s really sentimental, almost overly sentimental. And yet like a good Norman Rockwell painting you fucking hate to love it, but you look at it and it hits you in that spot where you don’t want to be hit. That’s sort of the way I feel about the letter, but you know I like taking that little chunk of the letter completely out of context, because you know, in the context of the band it’s much darker.”

Indeed it is, a pithy fantasist dialogue that kicks Western expansionism and cultural hand-washing into check without a sniff of the word ‘Iraq’. Palmer does, however, concede that were a pre-teen to badger her about the non-existence of Saint Nick, she’d probably “say the same thing as the New York Sun. Only shorter”.

There are a lot of reasons why some music fans might be wary of Amanda Palmer. Intentional or not (and let’s be honest, it’s intentional), there’s something intrinsically cultish and hermetically sealed about The Dresden Dolls. Force of will and sheer quality of music is slowly breaking that seal, but, truth be told, a 30-year-old Bostonian who paints her face white and sings liter-ate, oompah-oompah songs about abortions is always going to scare the crap out of some people. But not as many as you might think; the Dolls’ recent UK tour was a sell out success, and not everyone was wearing a silly hat. And although thinking too much about the rationale behind letting fans read her diaries might engender all sorts of conspiracy theories, it seems that we’re actually getting off quite lightly.

“That’s a very deliberately public diary. In that bag,” Palmer grins, prodding the canvas carryall WTT’s dictaphone is propped on with a booted foot, “is my private diary. And nobody reads that. That’s where I write about the shit that’s REALLY pissing me off.”

*For the record, WTT’s tabloid-style probing didn’t reveal which direction said change was going in.

Yes, Virginia is out now on Roadrunner Records. The new single Backstabber is released this month. The Dolls return to the UK in November for a pair of special shows at The Roundhouse in Camden Town.