Showing posts with label amanda palmer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label amanda palmer. Show all posts

Monday, 15 September 2008

If the Beach Boys had sung about rape and abortion ... Amanda Palmer


Well, this is a curious one. As you may indeed already have gathered.


It starts off normal enough: brittle, percussive piano. But pay attention to the lyrics and you'll soon observe – shall we say? – a certain disjunction between musical style and subject-matter.

Listen for yourself, Heavy Soil readers. What think'st? Beautifully-poised wit or a controversy too far? Comment away, my pretties.

Whatever you may think of the lyrics, though, you must surely applaud the fine pop production of Mr Ben Folds. He has compressed the ass off this one – and all to the good. Full of nice details.

Anyhow, Amanda Palmer released her album – Who Killed Amanda Palmer? – today. I shall be reviewing it not too long hence. Here's the official site – though, be warned: international delivery P&P is exorbitant.

... Oh, and, yes: it's that Oasis.



As ever, may I disclaim: the mp3 hereabovelinked is for, as they say, evaluative purposes only. You like it, you buy it. Um. Please.

Wednesday, 3 September 2008

How triangulation ought to be: Dresden Dolls


With Amanda Palmer's solo album (produced, intriguingly, by Ben Folds) due out on 16 September (fear not, Heavy Soiler: it will be reviewed), it seems apt to turn our ears in the direction of her band, the splendid Dresden Dolls – "Brechtian Punk Cabaret", in their own words.

Girl Anachronism is the band's best song:



Breakneck and untidy as (um) an untidy broken neck, Palmer's piano and vocals are offset by Brian Viglione's tight, tight drumming. This is how triangulation ought to be.

Nice video. Palmer and Viglione carry through their contrasting musical styles in the personae they adopt in the band's press/PR: he, inscrutable, almost inhumanly shorn of fallibility; she wildly oscillating between emotional extremes, by turns aggressive and vulnerable.

Oh, and, for the benefit of Ida Maria and her PR agents: here is a band that have got the sexual ambiguity angle pretty much bang-on (no pun intended).

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