The Dresden Dolls' Amanda Palmer grows up and dies on her solo debut

By Laura Leebove
Published: September 12th, 2008 | 5:00pm

Whether it’s her elaborate costumes, dramatic stage makeup, ever-changing eyebrow art, or her band’s raging songs about loneliness, hatred, and disorder, there’s no denying that the Dresden Dolls’ Amanda Palmer is pretty out there. Palmer’s provocative stage presence, manic piano arrangements, and throaty alto voice have contributed to the idea that she is not one to be messed with, but is she really the crazy, hysterical, and freakish anomaly of a woman that people have made her out to be? Not really. And in some ways, her first shot at a solo career could dispel at least part of the myth, perhaps because the 32-year-old musician wouldn’t hesitate to hand over her new album and say, “Take this record, get to know me.”

Palmer’s September 16 release, Who Killed Amanda Palmer (Roadrunner), isn’t a dramatic departure from the Dolls’ sound, although it originally was going to be just a collection of solo piano tracks. That plan didn’t last long. Ben Folds offered to produce it, Palmer and Dresden Dolls drummer Brian Viglione went on an official hiatus, and the project morphed from piano solos to strings, horns, and electric guitars. “It just turned into a very big, messy playground, which was fun, ’cause I had never made a record like that before,” Palmer says.

When it comes to songwriting and delivery, Palmer says her solo debut is more mature than much of her Dresden Dolls work. “I think for a long time I felt like I had to scream to get my point across until I finally realized maybe that’s not the best way,” she says. While there are a number of hard-hitting tracks (“Runs in the Family,” “Astronaut”), it’s the down-tempo pieces like “The Point of it All” and waltzes like “Ampersand” and “Another Year” that Palmer says better fit her current mindset.

In mid-August, Palmer is preparing for a performance in a Spiegeltent, a traveling, circus-like entertainment venue stopped for a few months at lower Manhattan’s South Street Seaport. A couple of hours before the show, I’m led through a maze behind the tent, over scattered extension cords, up a flight of wooden stairs, and into a trailer strewn with suitcases, clothes hangers, and a few plates of food. The Boston native is wearing a black fleece hoodie over a lacy, light-green dress, while a pair of shin-high combat boots cover most of her frilly, flowered stockings. Her auburn hair is short and messy, and so far her makeup consists of rainbow-colored eye shadow and, of course, her eyebrows, which on this day are black swirls with a star and some dots trailing under her right eye.

Onstage, Palmer is wearing a skirt that bunches up high in the front and flows to the floor behind her, along with a gold corset and a lacy bra. Her two-hour set draws mostly from the solo record, though she doesn’t leave out seminal Dresden Dolls tracks like “Coin-Operated Boy” and “Half Jack” from the duo’s 2003 self-titled debut. But if Palmer had to define herself with one of her albums, that surely wouldn’t be it. “It’s the super screamy, angsty, tortured delivery of that first record that might be the thing that’s getting me the reputation of ‘God, I wouldn’t want to run into Amanda Palmer on a dark street,’” she says. “I think a lot of people are afraid that I’m gonna be this spastic, uncontrollable, wild, really weird person — and I’m actually pretty mellow …. That’s kind of one of the bummers about being a songwriter: If you exercise your demons through your music, a lot of people are going to assume that that’s you, and that’s hard.”

It’s not likely for Palmer to run out of ways to exercise her demons. To name a few of her current endeavors, she’s working with author Neil Gaiman on a book to accompany the record, featuring morbid and sometimes bloody photos of Palmer “dead” in various situations; there are already music videos for almost every song on the new album; she’s helping to produce an album by a pair of conjoined twins named Evelyn and Evelyn; and the Dresden Dolls recently launched Post-War Trade, a line of fan-designed merchandise.

Her projects are nothing new to the diehard fans at Palmer’s New York show — they’re already singing her yet-to-be-released music and excitedly asking questions about her work with Gaiman. Palmer regularly communicates with her devotees via her blog, in which she chronicles her recent work and bares all with no shame (did you hear about the time when she accidentally left her menstrual sponge in for too long?). “It makes me feel like I have a giant group of friends,” she says. “It feels wonderful to be among all those people instead of just anonymously going up on stage and doing this thing, then going off and living a mysterious life.”

But if she’s not crazy, what’s with all the gore and why is Amanda Palmer dead? “Oh that’s just fun,” she says with a laugh. “I think that those paying close attention — especially when they see the book, which is mostly just hilarious — I think they’ll see that it’s mostly just fun.”

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