Here are 13 nifty piano songs with slightly naughty words and rather emphatic drumming.
DRESDEN DOLLS are an underground cabaret duo from Boston whose theatricality seems essential to, but not wholly reflected by, the recorded work.
We noted the quality of "Sing" when that came out earlier. It was a single issued to announce the album's imminence and is indeed included here. It’s a big beast of a torch song with, as we hinted, one or two rude words included.
The press people have made something of "taboos". But I'm not sure whether there's much mileage left in the hunt for unrogered taboos these days. Gang rape and back street abortion? Not really very funny, and (sadly) not shocking either.
And, here's the rub, not especially entertaining either. Falling just short (but not by much) of valid singer songwriter credentials, Amanda Palmer has a strong voice and piano style and she does put the songs together with convincing aplomb. But it still does sound like the musical content of a cabaret show, with the audience's attention necessarily ensnared by the costumes, the pretty girls, the brilliant make up and the lurid stage sets. In the theatre I'd be as agog as the next bum-on-seat. I'd pick up the CD on the way out, but I don’t think I’d play it through very often. The poetry doesn’t get near Brecht and the music doesn’t startle like Weil. Half way through second tune "Backstabber", I'm already feeling a bit pummelled by the sheer hard graft of the thumped piano, pounded drumkit and superloud vocal. The humour takes the route of a frontal assault and I feel more morose than I believe the artists intended.
There are visual and lyrical allusions to interwar German expressionism and hints of decadent social critique here. I can fully believe that large audiences can turn up and be thrilled by DRESDEN DOLL shows. But I have a music CD to review here and what I find myself having to do is to say "Go and see the show! You might like it. And you can buy the CD on the way out."
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The show stopper for me would be "Delilah", a pretty tune with some delicacy in the first verses of solo piano and a confiding, more fragile voice. Then the drums come in a little unnecessarily and a crescendo is aimed at for no obvious lyrical or musical reason. There is a promising introduction of a second vocal part that does some yodelling – but that too gets subjected to the Broadway Overstatement Treatment that lies at the heart of my discomfort with this album. I think that if you have heard of, and love, the singing of Ethel Merman and the humour of Jerry Lewis then this album will be just the thing. Compare and contrast with Monty Python's "Penis Song", if you would, Jenkins Minor.
Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione will be touring the UK during May, so do check them out. Blushing violets they are not. Shout out for "First Orgasm", "My Alcoholic Friends" "Mandy Goes To Med School" and "Me And The Mini-Bar". "Shores of California" is a pretty good pop song with a hooky tune. They might just tickle your funny bone.
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