And so we come to the event that reignited my blogging desire. Two weeks ago, I went to my first gig in Berlin for over a year, to see the lead singer/pianist of the Dresden Dolls, Amanda Palmer, touring her first solo album,
Who killed Amanda Palmer?. Though the use of the word "solo" has perhaps never been so loose...
I arrived fashionably late, not expecting to have missed a great deal by 9:30 as doors were only 9 o'clock. To my surprise, I opened the door to the concert hall rammed full of people, packed in like sardines, staring unmoving and silently at...a cellist. For those who don't know, Knaack is smallish rock club in downtown Prenzlauer Berg, owned by none other than Rammstein, Germany's biggest metal superstars. I'd been there for a few gigs before, but I'd never seen anything quite like this, and nor would I have expected to. Then suddenly, just as I was about to track back to the bar for some pre-crowd-hustling refreshment, the room erupted with applause. The last strains of the cello had faded, and the woman on stage was taking her final bow, though that was not the last we were to see of her that evening. I had just caught the end of
Zoe Keating's set, solo cello artist and backing musician to Amanda Palmer.
As I stood at the back of the small hall sipping my beer, the waves of a lounge version of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" drifted out over the PA, and I took a moment to marvel at the eclectic audience this unusal concert had attracted. Angsty 16 year-old girls mixed with punters who could quite easily pass for their parents, with a few metalheads and middle-aged accountants completing the pack. It was a fair bet that a lot of them had never set foot in the little rock club before, but that didn't seem to bother them or anyone else. Indeed it was the perfect backdrop for what would turn out to be one of the oddest, most original concerts I've ever experienced.
Next up on the bill was the main support band, New Zealand's
Battle Circus. The name may sound pretentious, but it couldn't be more fitting. Taking to the stage in a wave of sonic textures, the four-piece launched into a set of distorted atmospheric soundscapes, punctuated and at times tempered by wailing guitars and dynamic piano, and driven by hypnotic bass and energetic drums. They stated their intent from the beginning, an extended instrumental intro setting the mood before the opening vocal line came in after five minutes. The kiwis then proceeded to power through the entirety of their debut album,
The Half-Light Symphony, taking the audience through forty minutes of crushing post-apocalyptic psychedelia before finishing on their sinister and addictive first single,
Send in the Clones. It's unlikely that they were known to many of the audience beforehand, myself included, but the orchestral theatre they created engendered one of the best responses I've seen for a support band anywhere, and was an appropriate preparation for what was to come.
And barely had Battle Circus cleared their equipment away before Amanda Palmer's manager/compere for the night stepped on stage to introduce the lady herself. The lights went down, and the striking figure of Zoe Keating strode back on to the stage as the backing track started, accompanied by violinist Lyndon Chester. As the music rose to a crescendo, a troupe of dancers lifted a veiled, "dead" Amanda from the front row of the audience to her position behind the keyboard to rapturous applause. Finally, the singer's face was unveiled, and the crashing chords of album opener "Astronaut" rang out across the hall. Despite being behind a piano for most of the show and suffering with a broken foot (an injury sustained ealier on the tour in Belfast), Amanda Palmer maintained a lively and varied performance for the entire set, hair flailing and movement around the stage aided by the dancers, Australia's
Danger Ensemble. Despite possessing a voice which often conveys the impression that its owner is on the verge of madness, she proved herself so be an intelligent and eloquent speaker, engaging and entertaining the audience between songs in both English and German, explaining the meaning behind some of her songs and even allowing for an "Ask Amanda" question time session.
The set was also varied, with energetic numbers such as the opening song and
Guitar Hero contrasted with quieter numbers like
Ampersand, which showcased Palmer's capacity for dulcet vocal tones as well as manic hysteria. The solo songs were also interspersed with a couple of Dresden Dolls numbers and also some covers, most notably a Regina Spektor number and
Piraten Jenny from Brecht's
Drei Groschen Oper. A particular highlight was
Coin-operated Boy, which the members of Danger Ensemble complemented with an elaborate mime performance to match the lyrics, even mingling amongst the audience during the song. The dancers were the perfect foil for Amanda's theatrical "punk cabaret", and were rewarded in time-honoured street performance fashion at the end with a "passing of the hat" to fund their presence on the tour, the restricted budget for Palmer's first solo tour too restricted to cover them completely.
The evening ended with a rendition of Bon Jovi's
Living on a Prayer, for which the entire cast for the evening took to the stage together, including Jason Webley, the opening support act who I had missed. As the performers poked fun at Bon Jovi's lyrical contradictions, the audience was left with a feeling of almost having become part of Amanda Palmer's cast of friends themselves, having grown closer to her through her music and friendly demeanour throughout. And if the Dresden Dolls singer performs like this everywhere she goes, her music will touch many more across the world yet.
