The Dresden Dolls have been building momentum from their frequent Boston shows for awhile now, attracting hordes of mod/goth/art/punk/glam crowds and packing venues like the Paradise and the Middle East. They’re known for their dadaist cabaret antics onstage (October’s CD release party featured banana fellatio, living statues and a sex doll, among other attractions).
But for a stripped-down Monday night performance at the ultra-intimate Paradise Lounge, the self-described ‘Brechtian punk-cabaret’ duo proved that drums, a keyboard and singer Amanda Palmer’s knockout vocals are all it takes to captivate crowds and emerge as one of the most exciting bands in Boston right now.
Sure, Palmer, who sings and plays the keyboard, and Brian Viglione, who mans the drums and sings backup, could score some mileage from their visual presentation alone. Palmer, with a round face and fierce red hair (she resembles Lauren Ambrose of ‘Six Feet Under’), appeared in a dark minidress that barely extended past her hips, garters and black-and-white horizontal-striped stockings. Viglione wore mime makeup, a bowler hat and a tuxedo shirt he discarded midway through the set. The Dolls have cannily used their unadorned musical style (especially unadorned this evening; past shows have added more instruments) and gaudy tonsorial tastes as easily recognizable calling cards. Call them the Black Stripes.
But the duo’s trappings fell away as soon as Palmer launched into one of her astonishing vocal crescendos, recalling Tori Amos and Siouxsie Sioux. The band’s Euro-chic edge, lovelorn lyrics and waltzy, galumphing rhythms made her seem like Sally Bowles with a better handle on her emotions. Some songs, like ‘Good Days,’ have a Pixies-ish post-new wave patina. Others, like the infectious-as-a-cold-sore ‘Coin-Operated Boy,’ sound like P.J. Harvey stumbling into Weimar Germany.
At times, as on the rambling, elegiac ‘Truce Part I,’ the duo seemed almost comically self-important, but the razor’s-edge lyrics, coupled with the fury in Palmer’s vocals and Viglione’s astonishing breadth on drums (the sheer intensity of songs like ‘Half-Jack’ had audiences asking, ‘Guitars? Who needs guitars?’), made for a truly enthralling spectacle even without the spectacle.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
