I remember that
I came across this album
years after its release
at a sidewalk sale at one
of Portland’s most historic
record stores. I had heard
of them, nothing else, so
I decided, maybe intrigued
by the art work and by a
screaming deal, to buy this
album. Later when
I became interested briefly in
Amanda Palmer’s solo stuff,
it took me a while to realize that
she was the piano playing
lead vocalist in The Dresden Dolls.
A dynamic duo of sorts,
Amanda Palmer and her drummer
friend, Brian Viglione,
make an abrasive and
intensely theatrical kind of
heavy piano pop, a guitarless
punk rock cabaret music.
Amanda Palmer is a lot.
She makes no apologies for
that, which is right and good,
but her intensity can be,
at least for me, a bit grating,
especially when she’s singing
at full throttle. She’s got range,
though, between quiet and loud,
low and high, fast and slow;
it’s not like she lacks skill.
It’s the melody that is missing,
and she pounds on the piano
ferociously on the rockers
and that becomes tiresome.
She’s no Tori Amos, not that she
needs to be.
The real test, though, for me,
is the fact that when I’m playing
this record, I recognize none of it,
indicating that I listened to it
maybe once or twice when I bought
it and then shelved it. My favorite
thing here is the tune, “Coin-Operated
Boy.” It’s funny, hooky, vaudevillian, and
features a segment which sounds
like a skip in the playback, that,
after inspecting your stylus
operating in its normal stylus way,
you realize is a skip that is actually
performed. That’s unconventional.
And I think that’s Amanda Palmer’s
bread and butter: she is brash, angry,
serious, political, and her music in
both her solo work and on this one
by The Dresden Dolls is unconventional.
For my tastes, though, that disregard
for convention, while I approve of that
kind of thing most unflinchingly,
is not enough to win my undying attention,
my love, and ultimately, repeated listens.
Notes on the vinyl edition: The Dresden Dolls, Aft Records, 2003. Double red vinyl with black marble swirl.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric. .
michael jarmer 