music feature

Dresdon Doll on the Fringe

Amy Powell Yeates talks to Amanda Palmer about secret gigs, festival recommendations and Bertolt Brecht

Amanda Palmer has famously described The Dresden Dolls’ style as ‘Brechtian Cabaret Punk’. What does the reference to that influential German practitioner mean? “It means awesome!” She gleefully declares, lace-booted and cherry-haired. Then she decides to oblige: “What I love about the work of Brecht, and Weill, is the idea of conveying emotion without making it schmaltzy, sticky and sweet: that’s the difference between sincerity and sentimentality. It’s trying to be truthful, and that’s why I like it”.

Honesty is a consistent theme when it comes to conversation with Amanda; it’s in her unfaltering straight-talking tone, and it pounds through her solo debut, ‘Who Killed Amanda Palmer’, and photography book of the same title. It is this gritty material that Amanda will be offering at her Edinburgh gig(s) this year. “Instead of doing a run I’m putting all my energy into one main gig, but I’m doing a few secret shows on the side, which I ‘tweet’ a couple of hours before they are due to start”. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Amanda has been a regular feature at the Edinburgh Festival in recent years. “I love it: the way it looks, smells, feels… There is an irony though - you want to absorb everything around you (she cites ‘Die Roten Punkte’ and ‘Zeitgeist’ as shows not to be missed) but you also need time to relax and reflect. It’s important to listen to yourself and gain a balance… a bit like life really”.

“A lot of my friends com.mune here in August - it’s a great place for artists to discover and network. When I came across Reggie Watts a few years back I was completely blown away, and immediately introduced him to (then still tiny) Regina Spektor. The consequence of this was a snowball effect that saw many artistic relationships manifesting”.

Recently, Amanda has been working on an artistic collaboration of her own, which saw her return to her old high school. “It was about the Holocaust and was inspired by the music from Neutral Milk Hotel. It was an incredible piece of theatre and we all learnt so much. I kind of strode in all cavalier believing they’d all think I was really cool…” she admits in earnest, “but actually they were all quite suspicious of me, this crazy adult interloper, so I spent a lot of time winning over their trust. It was such a pleasure to work with my high school director again, he’d always encouraged us to write our own, original stuff from day one. It was less about textual products and more about processes, although I always knew anything by Beckett was gonna turn me on”.

“At no point did I ever try to work out how to marry theatre and music”, she says. The speed of her replies further suggests their authenticity. “In terms of my shows, I’ve never thought of ‘genres’ as separate entities: that’s such an uninteresting notion to me. A show is a show, within an endless umbrella: if you have a space and people are watching it, you just do shit”. Didn’t Peter Brook say that once?

“It is much to the bafflement of my business managers that I choose to travel with such a large cast and crew, and I spend months living on the floors of kind strangers as a result, but I simply don’t make decisions based on money. I just try to keep the people around me happy. It works!” Her philosophy is accompanied by a shrug and raise of her beautiful, intricately tattooed eyebrows, capturing an indisputable truth: there is nothing artificial about the art of Amanda Palmer.


Amanda Palmer, Edge Festival @ Studio 24, 22 Aug, 7.00pm (9.30pm), £12.50, fpp 138.

published: Aug-2009

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