Try as you might,
it's pretty damn impossible to categorize the music
of the Dresden Dolls. Sure, many labels have been
bandied about: theatrical rock, punk cabaret,
manic-musical, neo-glam-torch. But forget about what
you've read--you've got to hear it to
believe it. For the past five years, this dementedly
dramatic duo--writer/singer/pianist Amanda Palmer and
drummer Brian Viglione--have slowly but surely been
building one of the most passionate and diverse fan
bases in all of rock. Music lovers of all stripes have
responded with passionate fervor to songs that detail the
often brutal emotional and sexual lives of a diverse cast of
misfits, crazies, compulsives, and sociopaths.
After signing
with Roadrunner Records in early 2004, the band has been
enjoying a whirlwind schedule that has included headlining
sold-out tours on four continents, opening for Nine
Inch Nails, performing at the world's biggest
festivals, including Coachella, Fuji Rock, Roskilde, and
Glastonbury, writing an original musical at the prestigious
American Repertory Theatre (scheduled to premiere in
2007) and releasing an innovative and acclaimed live
DVD. Their second album, Yes,Virginia, received
universal raves when it was released this past spring
and became the number 1-selling new title of the week
on the Billboard album chart. Yes, Virginia is
the follow-up to the Dolls' critically
acclaimed 2004 debut album, which slowly built
from selling 275 copies the first week to a total of over
100,000 copies sold in the U.S. alone.
The band is
touring with Panic! at the Disco this summer, and as a
special treat for their fans, they've created a
series of events along the tour route that mix short
films submitted by fans with Dadaist vaudeville antics
from a myriad of performers, all topped off by a
special performance by Palmer. Check their Web site
(www.dresdendolls.com) for more information.
Here, Palmer
talks freely about her "fetish" for freedom of
expression, her songwriting process, and her musical
partner's penchant for sequined, Brian
Boitano-like blouses.
Peter Galvin: Let's talk about sex. Listening to
the lyrics of your songs, sex isolates rather than
connects. And at times there's a brutality
and a deviancy about it. What is the personal origin of
that kind of perspective? Amanda Palmer: Well, the first important thing
to know about my particular style of songwriting is
that I tend to write about topics that are inherently
conflicted and dark. And I think that people are often
really surprised that I'm a pretty relaxed, balanced,
happy person. I can be that way because I'm
putting out all of this heavily charged, dramatic,
isolated kind of music. When I really want to sit down to
play the piano and pour my heart out in a song,
it's usually because I'm upset about
something. I don't ever write songs about the
fantastic, loving, emotional sex that I've had.
I don't write songs when I'm just gazing at
the sky on a beautiful day--it's just not a
song topic for me. Really, in that moment I
don't get anything out of it except the pure
enjoyment of the moment, so I just want to actually
enjoy the day.
Your lyrics present a wide variety of sexual situations
and characters--transsexuals, sexual
compulsives, porn addicts, obsessive masturbators.
Are you at all trying to make a political statement
about the fluidity of our sexual natures--or yours?I never go into a song with a political agenda. Maybe I
have an artistic agenda. But usually, I have an idea
in my head, and I want to get it out. The hardest part
of my job--much harder than writing itself--is
filtering out all of the judgmental, politically sticky
questions that are going to come up when you start
writing about certain topics, including sex. I try
really hard to stay away from even asking those
questions. There's a real power in ambiguity.
There's a real power in not staking your
political flag and declaring your views. I try to keep my
songs deliberately interpretable. It keeps it interesting
for repeated listening. Why would I write a song about
how I feel about transsexuality? For me, it's
more interesting to bring up ideas and images with no
direction or agenda, and then everyone can process the
song based on their own feelings.
In other songs on the album, you seem to bemoan the loss
of intimacy in our culture, a loss that's
resulted as least partly from the technological
advances in the way we communicate--e-mail, cell
phones, BlackBerrys, etc. Is that something that
you feel in your everyday life?Yeah, I feel it in my own life; I see it around me a
lot. I feel like I see people connecting more and more
on a superficial level and less on a profound level.
Everyone's collecting friends and contacts so fast
that you really can't connect deeply with
anyone. I think that can actually make you very sad. I
was having a really hard day yesterday, and I looked
down at my phone, and I had one of those moments where I
felt like calling someone. I had already talked to my
best friend, but I still needed to talk. So I looked
at the phone, with its 172 contacts, and I just
started scrolling through the numbers really fast. I
thought, "Technically, I could reach out to any
of these people," but I sometimes feel that
I've just spread myself too thin.
I've read that your music, which has repeatedly
been labeled "punk cabaret" in the
press, has been influenced by German decadence, the
Weimar Republic, Kurt Weill, and even Liza Minnelli.
Your music really doesn't sound like
anything else out there. What do you feel is the core
influence of your sound?Those labels are a necessary evil, honestly. As soon as
journalists start to write about us, I feel like their
first job is to find a label for the music. And if
there isn't a name for it, they make one up. On the
other hand, a lot of ink has been spent on us that says,
"I don't really know how to classify
this." That's fine with me--I actually
find that rather flattering. If it's easy to
explain, then it's easily disposable. But
it's also been hard for this band because we had no
set niche--we had no set audience or demographic
who would obviously be into this band. We literally
had to win people over one by one.
There was interesting statement in your press, though,
which said that, in spirit, the band in more akin
to Sid Vicious than to Liza Minnelli. [Laughs] Actually, if it came down to a
choice between them, I'd have to say I'm
closer to Liza Minnelli. It's a stretch to find
something that Sid Vicious and I really have in
common. He wasn't really a songwriter, he
wasn't really a musician, he had a generally negative
world outlook, and he had a drug problem. But there is
something that the three of us do have in common:
We're all exhibitionists.
Now, let's talk about your fans. Are you conscious
of having a gay fan base?We definitely have our fair share of gay fans.
I've gotten a lot of direct letters from people
who are gay, bi, and transsexual. To me, it seems
it's clear as day that this band would appeal to
someone who was gay or sexually out of the mainstream.
I figured out that I was bisexual when I was a
teenager. I think Brian found out he was a textbook
cross-dresser when he was, like, 12. And I've never
met a more completely straight guy who is so
passionate about cross-dressing than Brian. He does it
occasionally on stage. He has a whole collection of clothes
that he calls his Brian Boitano collection.
He's really into gaudy sequined dresses and
tops. You should check out the gallery on our site. There
are some great shots of Brian in drag.
Why do you think gay people are drawn to your music?This band at its essence is about total freedom of
personality. As corny as it sounds, we are about
freedom of expression, whether its sexual, musical,
aesthetic, etc. So we encourage each other--Brian and
I--to follow our impulses, whether in the bedroom or
onstage. You can not only hear that in our music, but
it comes across in our stage shows, in our photo
shoots, in our interviews, in everything we do. If you had
to boil down our philosophy as artists, it would be
"Listen to your inner voice: What do you really
want to do, and why aren't you doing it?" If
that means you're gay, that's an easy one. We
feel really passionate about people being emotionally
honest with themselves. It's almost a fetish of
mine.