It's never a good thing to be that guy who loves a band when they're under the radar and then gets pissed when the band gets popular. So for the true fans, it's okay that the Dresden Dolls are going be huge. This self-described "punk cabaret" twosome is the best thing to come out of Boston's rock scene in a long, long time, but the wait has been worth it. Amanda Palmer (vocals and keyboard) and Brian Viglione (drums and occasionally guitar) know how to rock like none other, whether it's on their eponymous EP or on stage, most recently at the Black Cat in D.C.
Palmer is famous for appearing on stage in white face with painted-on curlicue eyebrows, a black crushed velvet jumper, and black and white striped stockings with a garter belt. Viglione completes the Liza-Manelli-cum-Michael-York-in-Cabaret look with similar makeup, a bare chest, black suspenders and a black bowler hat. By the end of the show, their makeup is usually smudged with sweat and exertion, so that they look like scary, messed-up dolls.
How to describe their sound? Viglione succinctly describes it as "straight ahead all-out rock," which is fair, but the real question is how they get so much kick-ass out of a two-person band. There are a few distinct factors at play: the lyrics, the vocals and the interplay between Palmer and Viglione. Palmer's lyrics are engrossing, shocking, and so satisfying; they smack of the delicious post-feminist sense of entitlement pioneered by PJ Harvey. A lot of the songs deal with love and breakups, but more specifically the psychic interplay between two individuals in a relationship. In "Girl Anachronism," Palmer confesses, "You can tell ??? that I've got some issues to work through / There I go again, pretending to be you." Such sentiments, terse and skillfully wrought, remain just barely inscrutable. It's one of those albums that you keep playing for a month, because your favorite song keeps switching. Combine this neurotic lyricism with piano-pounding, drum-smashing mayhem, and you could get a sense of the musical melee that is the Dresden Dolls.
Palmer's vocals are what give the band its cabaret-like flavor. Like a good actress (dare I say diva?), she's easily able to switch voices from song to song. In "Missed Me," (a song based on the children's rhyme that goes, "missed me, missed me, now you gotta kiss me") she assumes the identity of a psychotic manipulative seductress, a cross between Lolita and Sylvia Plath, complete with creepy, come-hither intonations. However, delusions of grandeur have faded in "Bank of Boston Beauty Queen," where she quavers silkily about being "caught up in the old punk protocol / and dreaming that the teenagers will think that I'm a radical."
Palmer's voice and lyrics find their completion in their interaction with Viglione's talented drumming. But it's more than the drumming -- on stage, one can see them perpetually working off one another, changing songs' arrangements and chord progressions with just a wink and a nod. In any band, there's a tendency to focus the spotlight on the vocalist, and although it's hard to overstate Palmer's talent, it was clear to everyone in the audience that the musical onus rested equally on the shoulders of both. The narrative quality of many of their songs is one of a kind, especially in "Coin-Operated Boy" (this song's lyrics change for the better when performed live -- check out the live album A Is for Accident) -- in which Viglione manages to drum like hell while acting out the part of the title character.
Viglione supplies the theatricality, and Palmer brings the drama. Their show at the Black Cat was an emotional roller coaster which drew about eighty people, which is impressive, considering that word of their awesomeness has not quite escaped the Boston area yet. The opening act was another Boston band, Count Zero, who played a respectable set to a receptive audience. Then, a local troupe of belly-dancers showcased their suggestive skills; one balanced a sword on her head -- sharp edge down -- while she danced. Although I was antsy for the Dolls to take stage, I noted that this performance added to the vaudevillian atmosphere of the concert, and how it helped them achieve such an ideal fusion of poetry, music and aesthetic, which is, of course, what the best cabarets offered. They covered Ozzy Osbourne's "War Pigs" to encourage the apathetic to rock the vote, and encored with "Truce," a slow, personal ballad about dividing up the world with an ex-lover so as to never meet again.
The concert happened to be on The Night the Sox Won It All, and between songs they asked the crowd for score updates. After they'd played their encore and left the stage for the second time, we were about to disperse when Amanda came back onto the stage, walked over to me (I was in the front row), took my hand and said, "We won," at which point I went nuts. At their next show, which was on Oct. 29 at Boston's Avalon Ballroom (which drew a capacity crowd of hundreds), she was talking about how at their D.C. show, nobody cared that the Sox had won, "except for this kid from Brookline in the front row who lost his [expletive deleted]." This seemed like a good example of their anti-holier-than-thou attitude and their willingness to engage their audience and fans. This is the first tour where they themselves aren't manning the merchandise table, and they still came out after the show to talk with fans, sign autographs, and take pictures. They're both highly intelligent and articulate people, and the next time they come to town, you can bet I'll be there.
