Music

Feb

2018

Nadine Shah — A Live Show & Album Review

The first time I laid eyes on Nadine Shah, she was not what I expected.

From the reviews I’d read, I’d imagined this willowy, sinuous and androgynous creature, hair slicked back and a steely expression. What I wasn’t prepared for was recognising her in a relatively short, bob cut, smiling body with a bubbly, welcoming Geordie accent – someone who looks both friendly and accessible, passionate and steadfast, and who switches with a twitch of the lips between statuesque model to someone any of us might know. While I would have loved to have seen the Nadine Shah of the Fool video — a brutally cutting song, therefore my favourite — this new version of her (in my mind, at least) was an unexpected delight.

“You my sweet are a fool, you my sweet are plain and weak,
Go let the other girls indulge the crap that you excrete”

When I saw her first in Sheffield, I made the mistake of drinking more than I’d thought. I endured the supporting act that was entirely not to my taste, and then I danced. Oh god, how I danced. For music that I’d usually listen to in the bath, I danced my arse off, and had an incredible time – even if, at the end, I couldn’t quite remember which songs were played.

Nadine Shah in the video for Fool

So the next time my opportunity came around, I was ready. I wasn’t going to drink. I had a broken foot but, luckily for me, the venue at which she was playing was hugely accommodating, reserving a sofa right to the side of the stage. So what that my vision was mostly blocked: my pain was alleviated, I got to enjoy the show, and every now and then I had a clear view to stare in slack-jawed passion at this incredible woman, whose incredible beauty seems entirely unknown to her.

She’s passionate, she’s expressive, and she dances like no one’s watching – even when a room of people who have paid to see her are in fact watching – and I can’t help but respect the Patti Smith-esque display. Every droplet of emotion heard in her songs turns into a tidal wave when seen live. You know the way most people can’t help but clutch their fists in the air to power ballads? That’s how Nadine looks when she’s performing – like I imagine I look when I’m singing along with gusto, but probably much more impressive.

Credit to Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

But it’s no wonder this passion comes through in her live shows. Her newest album, Holiday Destination, is more widely political than either of her two previous albums. She sings about the despairs of 2016; living in a Trump-ruled world; and perhaps closest to her heart the refugee crisis (as the daughter of two immigrants, it would be difficult not to feel strongly about this). Her songs vary in tone from dark and anguished to full of joy, but even the more upbeat of her collections tend to be sarcastic, even cruel. With this album especially she rockets between total despair and inspired hope; especially in Mother Fighter, her ode to political activist Raghda who was featured in A Syrian Love Story. Casting off the more commercial, radio-friendly hits of her previous album Fast Food (by no means an insult – music can be meaningful and accessible at the same time) and the smoke-filled jazz lounge set of Love Your Dum and Mad, Holiday Destination is more of a call to arms than anything else.

Where would you have them go,
A generation searching for a home?

During the performance, she spoke about the importance of artists in discussing politics. So many fans try to discourage artists and especially musicians from becoming political, and Shah has been particularly praised for highlighting issues such as the Trump administration, the refugee crisis and more — but she wanted to know how any artist could remain apolitical in times like this. Although I could name a few bands that have released songs about Trump, Brexit and refugee crises, they’re often bands like Depeche Mode that have always been political. For me, the greater question is how can any artist who sees what’s happening in the world not want to write about it? The answer is, unfortunately, “easily”.

“Cruel 2016 was the year that took our idols,
What is there left to inspire us with a fascist in the White House?”

Making the night even more special was her live backing band. Featuring collaborator Ben Hillier among other seasoned session musicians, they weren’t just a humble backup — everyone on stage worked together, regularly smiling at each other and grooving along to the music. Combined with her effortless vocal acrobatics which from honey-smooth to hauntingly husky, the entire band’s presence and undeniable skill kept the audience enraptured.

I can’t wait to see what Nadine (that’s Nay-dine, not Nuh-dine) comes up with for her next album – especially if she does decide to do something separate from her long-time collaborator (and all-round music legend) Ben Hillier. With a track record for one album every three years, I hope to be enjoying and appreciating her newest offerings in 2019!

Apr

2017

Depeche Mode – Spirit

“Possibly the band’s most industrial, wrath and rancour-filled album, Spirit deals with the darkest parts of the human experience, including apathy, self-hatred, political revolt and hopelessness. A lot of Spirit despairs at humanity; it’s hard not to see the effect of Trump, Brexit and the rise of far right extremism on this album…”

Head to Soundsphere magazine to read my full review of Depeche Mode’s Spirit

Jul

2016

Snippets Zine

My good friend Cat, half of the power couple running my favourite craft website Cut Out + Keep, very kindly allowed me to edit an issue of their fantastic zine, Snippets.

I’ve written for Snippets a few times before – starting with my in-person interview with one of my favoyrite musicians, Amanda Palmer, back in 2009. I’ve done book reviews, email and face-to-face interviews, product reviews and opinion pieces, but being in charge of my very own issue was something else entirely!

I chose to base it on Fandom, as I love seeing the things that people get excited about. I wanted to write about the things I love, and the way their Fandoms shape them, and ended up with some fantastic articles about things I would never have looked into it.

I’ll post some of the articles that I wrote individually, especially the cover star interview which was with two amazing geek ladies, Amy Dallen and Nika Harper from Geek & Sundry, but for now you can check it out here:

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Jan

2016

Jack off Jill, or One Night to Relive My Youth

Alright ladies and gentlemen.

This is going to be a tough one.

Look at that hair. Of course I liked Jack off Jill

There’s no point talking about how it felt to see Jack off Jill live without a little context, which is why I am hesitantly going to discuss my least favourite subject…me (at least in regards to this band).

I was eleven when Jack off Jill broke up, and I became a fan a year or two later. I never knew much about them, other than that I was madly in love with Jessicka and they were contemporaries of another act I adored as a teenager, Marilyn Manson. I can remember long car journeys with my family that were filled with listening to Clear Hearts, Grey Flowers over and over again on my CD Walkman.

To this angsty, goth teenager they were a soothing balm, as strange as that might sound if you know of them. So many of their songs expressed what I felt as a teenager; anger, despair, self-loathing, and while it might not sound healthy or useful to someone else, it was right for me. As I got older, the songs made progressively more sense to me, not less. Even when I went long periods of time without listening to them I could still sing (or shout) along, and the words still meant as much.

I don’t think there’s been a time in the last ten years when Jack off Jill haven’t been important to me. Three years ago on Valentine’s I made a video to My Cat with photos of my actual cat; Surgery became more literally relevant when I was nineteen and going under the knife; and the rest of Clear Hearts is the soundtrack to my teenage years.

So as you might imagine, I entirely freaked out when I found out that, fifteen years after their split, my beloved Jack off Jill were reuniting for a tour. There wasn’t a chance I could say no to this opportunity and I hurriedly snatched up tickets for the last night of the tour in Heaven, London.

To say I was excited would be an understatement. I mean, this was Jack off Jill, guys! Jessicka Addams nee Fodera, the personification of my teenage angst and long-time style inspiration, was going to be in the same room as me and a bunch of other screaming fans!

My route to Jack off Jill was through goth and metal music; while I was a big fan of riot grrrl it never occurred to me that Jack off Jill would fall into that category. So to experience this superb riot grrrl gig with all the attitude of goth and metal was perhaps the best surprise of the night.

It would be unfair of me to leave the support acts out of this, but I’ll be brief. The two piece American girl duo that started the night, The Regrettes, were awesomely punk and bratty – they did an incredible job of rocking really hard considering there was only two of them. The Ethical Debating Society kept the energy levels up with a post-riot grrrl rock-out, reminding me in attitude and style of another of my favourite bands in my teenage years, Help She Can’t Swim. Both of these acts did an incredible job of building the riot grrrl atmosphere, and it almost felt like a gig in the heyday of the movement – when girls were called to the front and uninhibited frontwomen dominated the stage. It was an incredible experience to be part of.

Gigs are hard to analyse, and hard to explain, as so much of it is caught up in the intangible nature of actually being there; bathing in the powerful glow of this strong, talented artist and feeling the ache in your neck from head-banging too hard. I was never going to be displeased with the setlist; the benefit of a band that has only released two and a half albums is that every song is golden, and we all screamed with joyous recognition to each one. Jessicka threw chocolate coins to the audience from her concealed granny pants, and had a bucket of “blood” ceremoniously poured over her during the encore. It was beautiful. She even made a passing reference to her contentious falling out with Marilyn Manson in the introduction to Author Unknown.

There was one particular aspect of that show, however, that really made me feel like I had to write about it. And that is, Jessicka’s real-time morbidity, which went beyond the humour of their shows and made everything more real.

There was a lot of talk about this being the band’s last show, for good – which isn’t entirely surprising, considering there was no promise of getting back together. Throughout the show, which was on her 40th birthday, Jessicka talked a lot about feeling as though she was in an older body. She told us her hair was thinning, and she was sick of it which lead to her hacking away chunks in front of us all. At one point she pulled a razor blade out and cut her forehead open, rubbing blood all over her face.

Twenty years ago, that wouldn’t have been unusual. Self-harming on stage was a fairly common occurrence for some goth bands in the nineties – think Till Lindemann making his head bleed with the blunt force of his microphone in Live Aus Berlin, or Marilyn Manson’s repeated on-stage cutting. But it’s virtually never seen these days, and while I obviously don’t condone self harming in any way, it made the show feel truly, viscerally goth, and was about as close to being taken back to a metal gig in the nineties as possible.

It wasn’t until after the show that I put it all together. They had to cut the tour short because she’s sick…her hair is thinning…her body feels old… What I had taken as a normal gothic preoccupation with death and a morbid sense of humour about mortality might have been more personal than I thought. Later snooping revealed that her illness is a result of a gastrointestinal bacteria causing her intestine to rupture, and that she’s been in recovery ever since her life-saving surgery in 2013. Hopefully with time she’ll be ready to embark on the mammoth journey that is touring the US.

That was a night I never thought I’d have. Not just because of who the band was and what they meant to me, but because I was – and still am – so blown away by the passion and intensity of the performance. Seeing an act like that in a venue so small was emotionally exhausting and utterly brilliant; exhilarating and deflating at the same time. Even weeks later I felt morbidity hanging over me like a shadow.

So thank you, Jack off Jill. You gave me an experience I hope I’ll always remember, and I don’t know if I’ll be the same again.

Only time will tell if that’s a good thing.

Dec

2015

Meeting Darryl DMC McDaniels

It’s hard to know where to start when you’re going to interiview Darryl McDaniels. I mean, it’s Darryl DMC McDaniels! The Devastating Mic Controller! One third of the first commercially successful hip-hop band in history. It doesn’t matter that I’m not personally a huge Run DMC; their music is so ingrained within popular culture that it’d be a struggle to find someone unable to name a single song they’re involved in.

The funny thing, though, is that he doesn’t act like he’s a big deal. Despite the stern manager Darryl was a consistently honest, eloquent, humorous human being, one you wouldn’t expect to be famous on such a level as he is. The key to which is, I think, the fact that he’s a comic book lover before a music lover, and in this world he still has some way to go.

He’s ambitious, to say the least. Thought Bubble was the debut for both DMC #2 and #1.5, created with the fantastic Tuta Lotay, but he dreams of the status of DMC comics decades from now, when he hopes their universe will be as well-known as Disney or Marvel. Although he could easily have worked with Marvel, he followed sound advice and went it alone instead, in order to maintain full control (and for the record, Marvel are huge supporters of his work).

It was Marvel comics that he loved as a kid. Unlike in the DC Universe with Gotham and Metropolis, the stories of Marvel were set in real places in New York; places the young Darryl couldn’t afford to see for himself. He spent his childhood drawing and writing, and excelled at English, although it was eventually Business Management that he studied at college, at the advice of his friend. “Listen to your friends’ advice,” he told me, “just don’t follow it.”

He thinks that teaching could have been his forte if he hadn’t had his rise to fame with Run DMC. That’s why the hero of DMC #1 is himself as a teacher – it’s a sort of alternate world where Darryl didn’t become a hip hop legend and instead became a junior high teacher (and night-time ADIDAS-class vigilante). Even within the graphic novel you can feel the respect he has for teachers, those rarely thanked everyday heroes of society.

The DMC comics are beautifully diverse, but as Darryl stressed it’s not for marketing reasons: he simply wants everybody to feel that they can relate to at least some aspect of a character. The diversity isn’t limited to skin colour either, and the hero of DMC #2 isn’t only Puerto Rican, but female and adopted. Her femininity is natural, and her fostering home environment is one of warmth and love – no tortured orphans in abusive homes here.

And because of Darryl’s life experiences he’s very keen to make the poor as important as the rich in his comics. One of the major things that he told me he wanted readers to take away from his comics is that no matter how bad your situation, or where you are in life, you are still important. Every life and every story is important, not just the wealthy and well-publicised ones.

He’s got a lot of ideas for the future of DMC comics. By the time his world has been built, the character DMC may be the least interesting of them! He dropped some hints that an aging superhero may be making an appearance, asking me what would happen to someone with super powers as they aged? Wouldn’t they still be comparatively stronger?

There have been talks about turning DMC into a film but Darryl wants to hold off for now. His reason? When it’s done, it has to be done BIG. Settling for anything less than a blockbuster would be a failure. For now, the comic needs to continue, preferably with the current mix of artists doing single issues each – the idea for which, by the way, being that if five people told the story of this event they would all tell it a little differently, which is wonderfully well thought-out.

And if he could have anyone illustrate an issue of DMC, he’s claimed it would be one of the artists on The Walking Dead because, in another great shocker, he’s a massive zombie nut! His prize possession, he told me, is an illustration of himself as a zombie.

So despite the interview not recording, I felt that I got a lot out of it – and I don’t just mean this awkward photo of us together. What was I supposed to do with my arms?!

Keep an eye out for DMC comics. If he can work some of the same magic with them as he did in DMC, we might well see his ambitions come true, and in twenty years we’ll be queuing up for the summer blockbuster release of DMC: The Movie.

Jul

2015

Lindemann – Skills in Pills

As a Rammstein fan – even more than that, a Till Lindemann fan – I had a lot of expectations for his side project, Lindemann. While I don’t particularly know his co-conspirator in music, one Mr Peter Tägtgren of PAIN and Hypocrisy fame, he is quite clearly an incredibly talented industrial and death metal musician, and it’s hard to imagine a better pairing really.

Warning: This review would probably be considered NSFW (depending on your W), so for a less personal and totally (maybe) objective version, head over to Soundsphere Magazine

This isn’t an album for those who are easily offended, squeamish, or particularly prudish. If song titles including “Golden Shower”, “Fat” and “Ladyboy” put you off, you probably shouldn’t listen to it. Many fans of Rammstein have never bothered to look up their lyrics, but those who have know that this kind of theme isn’t new for Till – it’s just easier to ignore when it’s in German. God knows I’m glad my parents couldn’t understand it.

Skills in Pills is the perfect starting track with its dance-inducing synths (seriously, it’s impossible not to dance to this song). According to an interview with Till, the title is a reference to his days back in East Germany when alcohol was illegal and to get high they had to mix together different prescription drugs. You needed “skills” to be able to do this though, as if you got it wrong you’d end up with some pretty serious damage. Actually, that explains a lot.

In tone, the song is pure industrial but with elements of the pop-synth side of the genre. It’s got its catchy synths, its heavy breakdown and Till’s heartbreakingly beautiful voice belting out with such passion – it works really, really well.

Ladyboy for example is, lyrically, almost the same as Zwitter, although about another person. For those who aren’t familiar, “Zwitter” means “hermaphrodite”, and the song is about how happy he feels to be both genders. Similarly in Ladyboy he sings about a passionate love for his ladyboy, in what is actually a really beautiful way – combined with the fury of not being able to express his love when he growls out “Why should I laugh when I can’t have fun with my Ladyboy?” This was the first song the duo wrote, and came from the German-speaking Till trying to explain his feelings about the subject to the Swedish/American Tägtgren – English was the only language they both knew, however little.

I’m not trying to say that Lindemann are going to win any LGBTQ awards or anything, but this theme of open-minded acceptance is prevalent on this album. “Fat”, which could have been an insulting song, is actually a roaring dancing industrial number about a man’s passion for heavily overweight women. It’s grotesque, and goes against the messages we are always taught about what is beautiful, but it’s actually lovely. When Till shouts “fat!” it’s with passion, not disgust. Complimenting these lyrics with tense violin music, church organs and heavy industrial beats gives you a real headbanger of a song, with a fantastic anthemic element. I expect it would be a real treat to see this played live.

Before you go ahead thinking that Till Lindemann is some kind of fetishistic sex pest, remember kids – songs don’t always have to be autobiographical! Till himself has noted in an interview that he enjoys getting inside the minds of others, finding what they want and hate – although to be fair, he also said that he wouldn’t object to an overweight woman approaching him (knowing that makes me feel a lot better about my chances if I should ever meet him).

Ladyboy has the same kind of classic industrial breakdown that appears later in the form of Praise Abort, the album’s single. Praise Abort is a clear leading single – it’s industrial-metal enough that it could be one of Rammstein’s stranger songs (think Pussy or Amerika) but also has an excellent tongue-in-cheek electronic element.

Songs like Fish On, Cowboy and Golden Shower are just insanely fun. The first begins with a strong electronic dance vibe and is a ridiculous and slightly gross kind of a song – the lyrics are pure Till, while the tune is clearly a result of Tägtgren’s experience with electronic industrial. The crude sexual imagery is hilarious, and the ethereal female singing adds a wonderful juxtaposition to it all. Cowboy was one of the first leaked songs of the album and it’s obviously going to be a hit as it’s just such good fun to dance to!

The lyrics are based on that childhood dream to be a cowboy – with perhaps a little cynicism for America for good measure – and the failure of not living up to that dream. It’s funny, sexual, and once you know the lyrics it’s surprisingly hard not to sing along; another song that would go down very well at a live show! Also, there’s a banjo interlude.

In the middle of the album it falls back to that real Rammstein feeling – slow, headbanging industrial with Till’s terribly creepy voice. In terms of tone, Children of the Sun and Home Sweet Home are almost pure Neue Deutsche Härte, a very specific genre of music which covers bands such as Megaherz, Oomph!, Emigrate, Eisbrecher and – of course – Rammstein. It’s usually used to describe a heartfelt industrial-metal sound and on these songs in particular it’s a much more pronounced sound.

These songs are also gentle reminders that Till Lindemann is a poet at heart, and Home Sweet Home is especially emotive, reminding me of the Rammstein song Nebel which always had a profound effect on me. Like Nebel, it’s the kind of song that makes you feel nostalgic and homesick, with just a touch of hope or, at least, a glimmer of happiness in the memory, and it’s almost certainly appreciated best with your eyes shut. Home Sweet Home could easily be a Rammstein song, although I don’t mean to diminish Tägtgren’s influence and incredible production skills.

Golden Shower particularly shows off Tägtgren’s style, starting slowly and dramatically before suddenly launching into some fairly serious metal – it especially feels like his death metal influences are coming through here. The lyrics to the song are disgusting – I won’t go into details as I’m sure you can guess – but if it were in German instead of English, the singing would probably sound something like Du Riechst So Gut. He also makes prolific use of the c-word, which is bound to put off a few people because trust me, you’ll be shouting it along with him after a listen or towo. The music veers between heavy metal and electronica with that driving industrial drumbeat backing it all up.

Yukon harkens back to that Neue Deutsche Härte style but with an 80s goth-pop synth that turns the catchy tune into something reminiscent of Gary Numan or Depeche Mode. Yukon is the name of a major river running through British Columbia, Yukon and Alaska that was the site of a mass prospector migration – hence “I want your gold but you want my life.” It was the last great gold rush, and of the 100,000 stampeders only around 30 – 40,000 made it, while the others died or gave up and turned back. It seems to be really about the unstoppable power of river, although he certainly ascribes the river female attributes.

Fun fact: while most people accept that the source of the Yukon is the Llewellyn Glacier in British Columbia, others believe it to come from Lake Lindeman. Coincidence? I think so!

I’ve already mentioned Praise Abort, but it deserves its own little section. There’s a very good reason why this was the lead single of the album – it’s probably the best song on the album, especially at first listen. If you couldn’t tell from the song title, it’s not going to be for everyone, and apparently the band have a crew of lawyers on hand just waiting for someone to kick off about it. Also, like Golden Shower, you will find yourself gleefully shouting “p-p-p-praise abort!” when Till does, so watch for that in public.

It’s a great mix of music though – pop-industrial synths interspersed with heavy chugging industrial guitars and a weirdly groovy tone running underneath every hate-filled word that spills from Till’s mouth. Later on in the breakdown we get a haunting female backing track to compliment Till’s gravel-like growling. Again, this song isn’t about him, and his two children are okay with it! The video is also something pretty special – pregnant ballerinas and Till doing the moonwalk are just two especially good bits.

That’s My Heart is the final song on the album, and one I wasn’t sure whether to discuss. It’s certainly one I needed to listen to a few times to really “get it” – it might not be the same for everyone but I’ve always needed more time to appreciate the slower, more sincere Rammstein songs and this is no different.

Basically, Till Lindemann can do virtually anything and make it beautiful, and it seems like he’s met a musical match in Peter Tägtgren. It may not be Rammstein (who are incidentally starting to work on another album this year – hooray!) but it’s not meant to be. It’s a thoroughly interesting experiment that came about as a result of two incredibly strange men wanting to make bizarre music together, and it’s a freaking masterpiece.

Fingers crossed for a second album!

Mar

2014

Emilie Autumn in Snippets

This article was originally posted in Issue 31 of Snippets – reposted here with thanks to Cat and Tom of Cut Out + Keep!

A native of Malibu, California, Emilie is a singer-songwriter, poet and violin prodigy. Her music incorporates hugely contrasting elements like classical music, glam rock, cabaret and electronica and she frequently uses burlesque, steam punk and Victorian themes in her music and stage shows. We were really pleased that she could spend some time talking to us in the run up to her American tour with The Birthday Massacre. Her first studio album, Enchant, was released in 2003 to great success. Emilie’s style then was very different to how it is now – she describes it herself as “having become more detailed, more intricate, fewer primary colours, more muted but more variety” and is proud of her evolution of style, which is an important part of finding yourself. On stage Emilie produces fantastic costumes and sets but even in her private life she is a compulsive crafter who nearly always makes her own clothes; “if I purchase something, it’s specifically so that I can screenprint some design on it, or something I think might be fun to shred.”

“I’ve still found the best revenge to be a good song”

Over the last ten years she has developed a devout and committed fanbase nicknamed The Plague Rats, who have been there for her through thick and thin; occasionally these fans are promoted to the prestigious role of Bloody Crumpet, a title for the female dancers and performers that provide her live back-up. What is a Bloody Crumpet, you might ask, and how does one become one? “They are usually the ones sitting alone in the corner of the café with a nervous tic and a noticeable problem fitting into the ordinary world,” Emilie jibes. “Like attracts like.” Over the years she has had eleven Crumpets and her current line-up consists of Veronica Varlow who has been part of the act since 2007, and newcomer Amalthea aka Moth who joined the show in October of 2013 when Captain Maggot announced she would be taking a break to pursue her own music.

An important part of Emilie’s art lies in her mental health issues which have troubled her throughout her entire life, and it has been interesting to see the evolution of her music in this respect. In her early career she seemed much angrier and cited revenge as her motivation, but has now clarified that “the real message is about justice…the righting of wrongs…and, for the record, I’ve still found the best revenge to be a good song.” Emilie struggled with her problems for a long time before realising “I AM special and individual and unique, but I am NOT alone. No one is alone.” She now aims to be the person that reminds others of this fact, turning her negative experiences into something positive for everyone else.Another important aspect of her personal and emotional progress is her crafty nature. “I do believe that creativity is absolutely necessary to live a healthy, happy life, despite whatever you’re dealing with, mentally” she comments, reinforcing everything we believe about the positive effects of crafting. “You don’t have to write books and albums and design an entire stage show around it, but you’ve got to do something to use what is going on and transform it.” She is well known for making elaborate costumes for her stage shows, both for herself and her Bloody Crumpets who all have distinctive styles and characters – “I simply base every element around the character that the costume is supposed to represent…If the costume is good, you know what the character stands for before the wearer even moves or speaks.” This is most obvious in the case of Captain Maggot, one of her longest-serving Crumpets, whose pirate costume has represented the start of the show for years. When I asked for her favourite creation she could only answer that it’s difficult because “all costumes represent characters that I am so deeply in love with” – from the original Pyrate Captain Vecona to resident cannibal Blessed Contessa, all her girls have had distinct personalities and skills.

Inspiration for her shows come from her own life as well as the work of literary geniuses like Oscar Wilde and William Shakespeare; “Oscar Wilde’s humor and wit has been a significant influence on me, which I think has actually programmed my mind to deal with difficult situations, such as turning a psyche ward incarceration into a joyful career,” she noted. “It’s all about finding the joke. And there is almost always a joke.” She also has an interest in Daphne du Maurier, an English author and playwright who should be best known for writing The Birds (which the Hitchcock film was based on), a person whom Emilie admires as “she’s very dark and detailed and descriptive.” Quite possibly her darkest album, the title of the 2006 Opheliac was inspired by the Shakespearean character who was driven mad by controlling men and committed suicide, and contains the song Shalott, based on The Lady of Shalott by Lord Tennyson. She even hinted in our chat about at a future project in which she will create an audiobook series of Edgar Allan Poe’s entire works, which she is sure which infect her mind in a significant way.

“Oscar Wilde’s humor and wit has been a significant influence on me, which I think has actually programmed my mind to deal with difficult situations, such as turning a psyche ward incarceration into a joyful career”

Although the Poe series is some way off, her fans will be pleased to hear that there is something much bigger in the works: an Asylum musical! The subject of her semi-autobiographical book The Asylum For Wayward Victorian Girls, which deals heavily with her time in an institution, has been expanded into her most recent album Fight Like A Girl and in 2014 Emilie aims to release a musical version of the story. She will be working with Darren Lynn Bousman, who directed her F.L.A.G video, and is now in the process of composing original pieces of music for the show and casting roles other than hers, and the Bloody Crumpets’ – the announcement at a gig in London about the musical was met with cheers from audiences and fans worldwide.In her alter-ego as The Admiral, Emilie is part of the Platonic Friends duo with the actor, dancer, singer and producer Marc Senter, known in the Friends context as SharC. Marc also starred in the Fight Like A Girl music video and in the short musical horror film The Devil’s Carnival with appearances from Emilie Autumn, Captain Maggot and The Blessed Contessa. “The beauty of it is that Marc is a well known indie actor with a lot of integrity, and I’ve got the same reputation in music, but Platonic Friends is all about selling out.” Sounds intriguing! “We also have breakdancing as an actual instrument.” Merchandise is expected to come before music, and apparently following @platonicfriendz on Twitter will provide you with educational Shark Facts from SharC on a daily basis, for those with an interest in undersea life.

What else is on the table for the Queen of Rats? “The Asylum Emporium is in testing stages for my new Signature Blend tea, which is a rich black tea flavoured with almonds, cocoa, and rose petals,” she dished. Currently the website stocks a blend of tea called Basil’s Brew, a Chinese Silver Needle tea with peony, peppermint and chrysanthemum flowers, but she hopes that her new blend will become a High Tea favourite. The “Laboratory” section of the Emporium which has remained blank for a year now is rumoured to be a return to selling perfume; she once released a perfume called Mistress which was co-created by Queen fLee, and released the song “O, Mistress Mine” for free with the product, which came with rose petals.Whether she’s Emily-with-a-y, the Asylum inmate responsible for the Asylum letters, dressed as the Rat in grey rags or glammed up for her role as The Admiral, Emilie aims to inject creativity into everything that she does, and expresses herself through costume, expressive dance and performance. The last decade of her career has seen her progress from the fairy of Enchant, to the fury-filled Opheliac, and finally to a beautiful woman who is proud of herself, her mind and her body at last. “Every woman should experience this feeling. I’m becoming myself. That will never stop.”

May

2013

Rebel Girls and Runaways

Riot Grrrl was the movement I always wish I’d got to experience first hand. It was a huge movement in the ’90s and although there are many versions of how the movement started, most people would agree that the band attributed with starting up Riot Grrrl was Bikini Kill. Starting out with a free zine with the same name, they later became a band and were into creating more female-focussed gigs by encouraging the boys who wanted to mosh and dance violently to head to the back, while the girls could enjoy the music at the front if they wanted. As with any feminist movement, they were labelled sexist towards men, but that wasn’t what it was about – it was about trying to do something that women could enjoy just as much as men.

The zines carried on from the punk ethos of the ’70s and the college idea of freedom of speech. Cutting and pasting together pieces of photos and literature was the original form of what we now have in many online zines – but before the internet was really used, it was important to have something that could be reproduced, photocopied and passed around to get the message out. It was never about making money but about spreading the word, and helping girls to come together. And also, importantly, about advertising girl punk rock bands, which were hardly seen in major music magazines – and if they were, were normally insulted or at best, classed as “good for girls.”

“We want and need to encourage and be encouraged in the face of all our own insecurities, in the face of beergutboyrock that tells us we can’t play our instruments, in the face of “authorities” who say our bands/zines/etc are the worst in the US” The Riot Grrrl Manifesto

The bands grouped together, and there seemed to be much less of the competition between bands than often happens now, because they were all fighting for the same cause. They wanted to talk about the issues that women go through but were never allowed to talk about; like childhood abuse, rape, abortions and equal pay issues. They could talk about lesbianism, but in a way that wasn’t designed to just attract men – real love between two women, which was either unspoken or still considered “just a phase.”

Riot Grrrl has taken on many forms, and although it is largely associated with punk rock music, anyone who believes in the Riot Grrrl manifesto could be one, whether they realise it or not. Singers like Beth Ditto have come out as saying they support the movement – Ditto said that Riot Grrrl helped her to become a whole person. Other contemporay artists and bands which seem to fit into the movement include Amanda Palmer, PJ Harvey, Regina Spektor and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Not many people would come out as saying they’re Riot Grrrl – any more than people tend to announce that they’re feminist. It’s not about declaring it as a publicity stunt, it’s about being it and getting across the ideas in your music.

Seeing girls in the rock business doesn’t happen all that often, even now – of course they exist, but usually as lead singers or bassists. These are seen as the “acceptable” places for women to have power, but the drums and electric guitars – the instruments that are seen to be gritty and difficult – are reserved for the men. The movement also revolutionised the idea of a female musician who didn’t have to be beautiful or thin, just talented. Even now in the rock industry there are so few female musicians who are not conventionally attractive, when in history male singers such as Steve Tyler, Axl Rose and Sting were seen as sex icons despite not being commonly accepted as attractive. In many metal bands, the attractiveness of a male lead singer means nothing, but Christina Scabbia of Lacuna Coil will be criticised if she puts on a little weight or takes an unflattering photo.

“You learn that the only way to get rock-star power as a girl is to be a groupie and bare your breasts and get chosen for the night. We learn that the only way to get anywhere is through men. And it’s a lie.” Kathleen Hanna, Bikini Kill

I think one of the greatest parts of the movement was the girls’ acceptance of what people thought of them – they said “I know you think I’m a bitch, so I’m going to write it on my arm,” and often wrote conflicting messages on their arms, such as the famous picture of the band Huggy Bear in which lead singer Niki Elliot has written “Slut” on one arm, and “Prophet” on the other. Other than that, there was no distinctive style for Riot Grrrl – no way to dress like one – which meant it couldn’t be corrupted by capitalism as easily as, say, Punk culture.

Riot Grrrl brought feminism into the public eye in a way that was less academic and less structured – instead of only finding a voice in studying feminism as a subject, or by participating in marches, girls were able to kick and scream about what really mattered to them. It gave girls – normal girls – a voice, and that voice wasn’t what a lot of people wanted to hear.

A re-emergence seems to be happening now – the DIY ethic that Riot Grrrl helped bring back with third-wave feminism has stuck longer than anyone had predicted, and with films like Whip It!, we get to see natural women a little easier than before. So for all of those who thought that Riot Grrrl was just a phase, just some angry girls kicking off – you were very much mistaken.

Posted both in Snippets #19 and on Neutral 2013

May

2013

Twelve Reasons to Die – Ghostface Killah

If you’ve read many of my reviews, you might have noticed that I have a particular fondness for multi-media stories and thematic pieces of art – so it’s no wonder really that I would enjoy Ghostface Killah’s new comic book Twelve Reasons to Die, a collaboration with Adrian Younge designed as an accompaniment to his newest album of the same name. With both the album and the comic executive produced by RZA and produced by Adrian Younge, GFK manages to pull together pieces of crime fiction, horror, soul and the supernatural to create the story of a vengeful spirit taking down the twelve mob bosses of Italy. The first ever release from Black Mask Studios, created by the man who has been described as a “compulsive storyteller”, Twelve Reasons to Die is an ambitious project, only for mature readers who are not easily offended. You have been warned.

The first issue actually contains four stories which are woven together, with the largest portion of the book dedicated to the story of how the 12 Delucas formed out of a mutual interest in increasing the quality of crime in Italy. In a series of Polaroid-style flash-backs, Mussolini’s influence on the crime families of Italy is spread out before us in scenes of violence, rape and war, but out of this come the twelve men who act with honour. The irregularity of the panels takes us smoothly through the evolution of the crime syndicates, with each mob boss driven by different motivating factors. Bodies dripping with blood are subtly placed in the trunk of cars as civilians walk by, no one paying any attention to the horror and with a seeming smile on everyone’s face. A ten-panel double page spread spells out the highs and lows of power that crime brings, and how easy it is to abuse that power; it’s obvious that things are far too easy for these men who are not as honourable as they think.

In a night club, a mysterious woman reports to an unknown companion that the twelve members have arrived and it’s obvious that the men are about to be in some trouble. In walks this new gangster – who bears a striking resemblance to GFK himself – and with only the words “Evening fellas” promptly destroys the 12 Delucas in some incredibly brutal ways. The narration reveals that they never had a chance, that they were only soldiers but Anthony Starks was a weapon. Fans of Ghostface Killah will most likely know that he has previously adopted the monikers Tony Starks and Ironman (with vital spelling differences), therefore it’s perhaps unsurprising that he appears as his comic book alter-ego.

The other stories, which are flashbacks and connected to the story in various ways, deal with terrifying sheep, a haunted record collection and an incident of death by bees. This first issue is a really interesting mixed bag and feels like a huge teaser for the rest of the run, setting up some interesting plot devices in this supernatural giallo work. Written by Matthew Rosenberg and Patrick Kindlon, the idea to bring in a rotating team of some twenty artists (from the little-known to the well-loved) is an inspired idea which echoes the collaborative ethos of Wu-Tang Clan and ensures that the comic is not defined by just one artist’s style. Dave Murdoch’s transition splash page which shows the vengeful entity Ghostface Killah is a beautiful piece of work and while it took me a moment to adjust to the rapid shifting of artistic style it should be really effective over the series. The colouring from Jean-Paul Csuka varies from blood-drenched reds, to pastel auction-houses, to soul-inspired pink and blue pop-art – the abrupt changes add to the frenzy of this comic, and a shout-out has to go to the smooth lettering of Frank Barbiere.

The album Twelve Reasons to Die is available on CD, vinyl and cassette as well as digital, and subscriptions for the comic book can be found in the Black Mask store. The movie-style advertisements show the influence of European B-movies and 70s psychedelic soul on the story.

Feb

2013

Monocyte – the album

Saltillo – known as Menton3 in the comic book scene and Menton John Matthews III in the real world – is the disgustingly talented multi-instrumentalist behind the 2011 album Ganglion and the 2012 album Monocyte, written as an accompaniment to his creator-owned graphic novel of the same name. Alongside being proficient on the cello, viola, violin, guitar, drums, piano, bass and banjo, Saltillo is an expert in a slew of electronics and a master audio sampler; it’s no wonder Saltillo is often cited as a band rather than an artist, considering how remarkable it is for such a complex album to be accomplished by one man.

His music is most frequently described as a combination of trip hop and neo-classical, incorporating orchestral elements with samples and electronica synths, although there are also clear goth influences. The synthesised, echoing female vocals on If Wishes Were Catholics and Veil are incredibly reminiscent of early 2000 gothic metal bands like Evanescence and Lacuna Coil, and are provided by Sarah Matthews, the artist’s wife and a deputy coroner in Chicago , Illinois whom he worked with in a previous music project called Sunday Munich. Saltillo is one of those musicians who was never classically trained, but has managed to learn and master many instruments to such a high quality that the casual listener could believe he had been. After releasing his first solo album Ganglion, he took a break from music to dedicate his efforts to his artwork, but his graphic novel Monocyte brought back the passion of music. After living for months in the world he had created, an externalised version of his inner landscape, he felt compelled to write the soundtrack of that world. For him, the experience was so fully immersive that the world needed both visual and audible representations.

The album begins with slow, mystic-sounding strings and echoed fragments of speech before bursting into a cacophony of electronic noises and prophetic speech. ABEO is only two and a half minutes and already manages to conjure the feel of a mystical post-apocalyptic land when Proxy kicks in with an industrial trip-hop vibe. The combination of classical music and Shakespearean poetry over synths swells into a dark and dramatic song which ebbs and flows and seamlessly drops back into the piano-heavy If Wishes Were Catholics. The haunting female vocals of Sarah Matthews make this song more easily accessible than many on the album, although it is still masterfully assembled with amazing attention to detail evident in the many layers of music, and Mrs Matthews voice adds pure human emotion to the music.

The Right of Action feels like a soulful dirge, a steady procession toward hopelessness which echoes the graphic novels theme of immortality as a tiring curse against humanity. The next track, They Do It All The Same, begins like a religious chant but falls into slow, trippy club music with the feel of Eastern religious music mystery; it’s clear that Saltillo is influenced by the iconography which religion holds in music. Gatekeepers is much more experimental again with a variety of synthesised noises being brought together like an orchestra while a British voice that sounds crackled as though on vinyl talks slowly throughout, first quoting Euripides’ The Medea, then Shakespeare’s Sonnet 144 (which is an appropriate lament of the artist’s struggle between hope and despair), finally finishing with a passage from Henry VI about the pointlessness of war. I Hate You is more frantic, bringing in sharp strings, canned laughter as on a TV show, and what sounds like Saltillo’s trusty banjo – not something you’d usually expect to hear in either neo-classical or trip hop music, but it works. The juxtaposition of American sitcom laughter and selections of Bible passages create unease, and this song leaves you feeling breathless in parts, only falling back occasionally to incorporate elements of previous songs before moving on again.

Philosophical double-speak accompanies gentle violins for the beginning of Forced Visions; this song is a lot lighter than many others on the album, offering a brief respite from tension without allowing the listener to fall out of the very specific feel that this album has. It steadily moves on into Hollow – which invokes both the sounds of a 18th century ballroom and a modern industrial band – and The Locus Priory which builds up the tension yet again, still maintaining the consistent feeling of overwhelming sadness and human suffering, weaving in snippets of earlier songs to give the album a thematic feel much more like the score to a film than a collection of songs.

A female vocalist accompanies the music in Veil, and it’s unclear whether this is Sarah Matthews again or someone else, as the credits only assign the vocals on If Wishes Were Catholics to her. This song starts quite differently from all the others, with an early 20th century blues vibe with just a hint of a Vincent Price horror film, but by the time the singing is brought in it becomes slightly more normal, a soulful vocal performance over the crashing and grinding of synthetic noises. Religious chanting and the lamentations of an old woman (drawn again from The Medea by Euripidies draw the listener into a false sense of security at the beginning of To Kill A King, as it soon bursts into heavy, rhythmic drumming like tribal dance music. Full of a positive energy and more peace than has been felt for this entire album, the song drains out to the crackled matron’s voice and lets the listener slowly slip away with a real sense of completion – a feeling that echoes the emotions of an immortal who has finally been given the eternal sleep they craved.

Although this album is an accompaniment to the graphic novel, there is no reason it should not be listened to alone. Saltillo is an incredibly talented and nuanced artist – in every meaning of the word – and while the score sets the tone beautifully for the graphic novel it is an album which has no problem standing on its own feet, should it be to your taste. A craving for experimental music, a willingness to listen to mostly instrumental songs and an appreciation for mood, style and technical greatness over catchiness and marketability are necessary for enjoying the album. It isn’t easy music; neither is the graphic novel an easy piece of literature to digest, but it’s completely worth it.

Monocyte is available in two formats; the CD released by Artoffact records, and the EP vinyl Monocyte: The Lapis Coil which features Proxy, Gatekeepers and the Locus Priory as well as remixes of If Wishes Were Catholics and The Right of Action, and the added bonus track Necromancy. All with artwork by the musician.

Jan

2013

The Dirt Tracks – The Madding Crowd

After a smashing start in 2011 with their single ‘Never Been To Mars’ and rave reviews of their live shows, the fresh-faced Dirt Tracks have returned with a new EP ‘The Madding Crowd’. The four-song EP brings together upbeat, Morrisey-sounding songs with much grungier electronic styles. Despite being a relatively small band, the production quality from Alex Wharton at Abbey Road Studios – who has worked with the likes of The Chemical Brothers and and Bjork – is smooth and professional.

The Valencian quartet, comprised of Coma on the guitar and lead vocals, Masid on the drums, Karl controlling samples and additional vocals, Mikel on the bass and Rafa on guitar and backing vocals, form a a tight-knit indie rock band reminiscent of an early Radiohead, or Muse. Their impressive vocal ranges mix seamlessly with muddy guitars over orchestral strings, leading the music to often feel like a British indie song you may know, but without ripping off or being unoriginal. Coma, Masid and Karl had worked together previously, but when Mikel and Rafa joined them in June 2011 they formed The Dirt Tracks, a band which are gathering more and more attention for their impressive live shows and complex music.

Since starting out a couple of years ago, the band have worked hard on building a fan base and piecing together the EP ‘The Madding Crowd’ which portrays a style built on a huge variety of influences from seventies rock to modern-day British indie scene. Singing in English was barely a choice for this Spanish band – being so influenced by British music, it seemed much more natural, which has lead many attendees to their shows to believe that they are English; a huge compliment in some ways, musically, for the band. Sometimes small bands want to be huge, to have adoring fans, but all The Dirt Tracks want is the chance to explore their music and to see people dancing and having fun – if they could make enough money to spend all their time dedicated to music they would be happy, but this is a group of people for whom creating and performing music is a vital passion more important than fame and fortune.

An EP well worth checking out if you’re into some of the heavier, alternative styles of British indie, this feels like it could be a ramp up to something much more spectacular in the future. Their recent tour of England was a huge success and critics are predicting big things for this band once they cement their style more firmly and move from the shadows of Muse and Radiohead to become a solid, stylistic band on their own terms.

‘The Madding Crowd’ was first released in May of last year, recorded and mixed at Music Rooms Studios in Valencia and Mastered at Abbey Road Studios in London.

First published on the Soundsphere website: http://www.soundspheremag.com/reviews/cd/cd-review-the-dirt-tracks-the-madding-crowd/

Sep

2012

Black Light Burns – The Moment You Realize You’re Going to Fall

Wes Borland, eccentric guitarist of Limp Bizkit, returns to his crossover rock project Black Light Burns with its second album, ‘The Moment You Realize You’re Going To Fall’.

Although ‘The Moment…’ has only just been released it has been four years in the making, during which time Borland has worked (briefly) with Marilyn Manson and rejoined Limp Bizkit, relegating Black Light Burns to a side-project – even though, in 2012, it’s doubtless that BLB is his main passion.

The style of this album varies and comes with many influences; heavy elements from his time in metal, industrial elements drawn from his great passion for the darker side of electronic music, and a sleazy distortion reminiscent of The Eels and old goth rock. Borland himself cites inspiration from bands as diverse as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Nick Cave and The Prodigy in this new album, which he has balanced across genres to attain a heavy feel without falling into strict metal. It’s our humble opinion that ‘Cruel Melody’ was too produced and clean for Borland – perhaps due to its being produced by Danny Lohner – and his aim with this newest album was to create an album which felt live, with plenty of overdrive.

The opening lyrics of the album in ‘How To Look Naked’ echo the closing lyrics of ‘Cruel Melody’, linking the albums together before differentiating them in style. ‘Cruel Melody’ was Borland’s first attempt at lead vocals, which have been worked on between the albums – despite finding his identity as a vocalist it is still obvious that Borland is not an all-out, although he makes up for his lack of technical skill with a creepy, whining style which suits his music perfectly. He also does not feel the need to constantly sing, with a few of the songs being mostly instrumental. The heaviness of this album comes from the bass and distortion, as opposed to the heavy guitars which so often define metal music and especially his music with Limp Bizkit, and a truly experimental feel flows through the music. One of the most interesting and memorable songs on the album, ‘Your Head Will Be Rotting On A Spike’, has an odd, hollow sound which is hard to pin down – this is the sound of Borland’s antique piano being plucked at the strings by a guitar pick.

Although Borland’s vocals can become a little repetitive, they are by no means the most important part of the album, and the live feel of the album is perhaps enhanced by his imperfect voice and heavily personal involvement. This album is truly bizarre, and it should make for a thoroughly interactive and one-of-a-kind show.

The album ‘The Moment You Realize You’re Going to Fall’ is out now through Rocket Science Ventures.

First published on Soundsphere magazine’s website, thanks to Dom for allowing me to post it here. Original article – http://www.soundspheremag.com/reviews/cd/cd-review-black-light-burns-the-moment-you-realize-youre-going-to-fall/

Sep

2012

Minus the Bear – Infinity Overhead

First published on Soundsphere Magazine, original article can be found here – http://www.soundspheremag.com/reviews/cd/cd-review-minus-the-bear-infinity-overhead/

It’s difficult to define a band who so easily slip between genres on just one album, let alone five. In their eleven years, Minus The Bear have been described as indie rock, progressive indie, math-rock and more.

‘Infinity Overhead’ is no easier to pin down than any of their others. It is certainly closer to their older styles than their most recent release, ‘Omni’, which was too different for some fans – they lost some, but they gained more, and most importantly learnt from their experiences.

With ‘Infinity Overhead’, they were reunited with founding member Matt Bales who produced ‘Planet Of Ice’ and ‘Menos El Oso’ and combined with British record label Big Scary Monsters have had the freedom to produce something that is more grown up, adult, and significantly darker while still staying true to what brought fans to them in the first place. As bassist Cory Murchy describes it – “We didn’t go anywhere, but we’re back.”

The opening track ‘Steel And Blood is a surprisingly upbeat-sounding song about an horrific car crash. Minus The Bear have always been fantastic at developing rich, textured music – so much so that often the lyrics are the last thing you are likely to hear, which makes their sound so interesting. With each listen you hear a little more of the sweet-yet-tragic lyrics, but it’s the heavy guitars, pop-like synths and poignant violins that make you really feel the tragedy of the young lovers and perhaps could be seen as an ode to their old music which so frequently betrayed adolescent ideals of going for drives in the summer and making love.

‘Diamond Lightning’, a single from the album, is sad but beautiful. This is a song to listen to as you like in a park alone on a summer day – shut your eyes and listen to the way the whining guitars seem to talk to each other, becoming more complex in the chorus before getting darker and more experimental throughout the rest of the album. Just when you think you’ve become comfortable with their style, Minus The Bear throw something new at you – glitchy synths, Oriental-sounding tapping and genuine raw emotion all add together to create an album which constantly reinvents itself in tone.

Towards the end of the album, the songs become darker, more aggressive and more confident. ‘Lonely Gun’, is one of their most disco-like songs and perhaps the best to sum up the album – it’s dark, confident, dancey and dirty-sounding but still incredibly complex and beautifully arranged. It’s also one of the darkest, lyrically speaking, seeming much more hopeless than usual, ending in a brief saxophone solo which leads perfectly into the final track, another dark-pop track with incredibly detailed guitar solos between the gritty, chugging sound of the verses and chorus.

They are not a band to trail off toward the end of their album – the lyrics are without hope and as it gets darker and more intense the listener isn’t left with a feeling of release but one of panicked energy. This is an album to be listened to on more than one occasion – several if possible – and as a whole. Every song is a block in the construction of this album which seems to symbolise a period of growing up for the band, of coming back home as someone different after a powerful journey.

‘Infinity Overhead’ will be released on August 28 through Big Scary Monsters and is available now for pre-order on iTunes.

Jul

2012

Amanda Palmer

First published in Cut Out + Keep’s Snippets – thanks to Cat and Tom for letting me post it here too! Original article – http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/snippets/issue17/amanda_palmer

Amanda Palmer is a Boston-based singer, lyricist and pianist, best known as the lead singer of the Brechtian punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls. With four CDs under her belt, including last year’s Who Killed Amanda Palmer solo album (produced by Ben Folds), and many collaborations, Amanda is definitely worth looking out for.

It’s mid-September in London and the leaves are already beginning to fall from the trees, Amanda leads me out to the courtyard of the Union Chapel to begin the interview. She pulls a chair up next to me and sits down, munching carrot and houmous, obviously exhausted from a busy weekend which included a performance at the Union Chapel the previous night and an appearance on the Jonathan Ross radio show that morning. “I did a brand new song called The Bed Song”, she tells me. “I butchered the bridge fairly well, but I think it was okay. I didn’t kill it, only maimed it. Of course, the recording of the show would later prove otherwise – The Bed Song is a beautifully tragic song and she pulls it off wonderfully. It sounds even better live that night.

The Union Chapel is a fantastic venue; huge and filled with candles and stained glass windows. It doesn’t take Amanda long to make it her own. She starts off with Astronaut; a loud, passionate song about a woman dealing with the death of her astronaut husband. The set consisted of a mix of songs from her solo album Who Killed Amanda Palmer (an homage to Twin Peaks), favourites from the Dresden Dolls’ albums, and covers. She even pulls Neil Gaiman on stage at one point to sing Derek and Clive’s “Jump”. For those who don’t know, Neil Gaiman is the award-winning author of Coraline, Stardust, the Sandman series and many others novels, children’s books and graphic novels; and Amanda’s partner.

Incredibly curious, I had to ask about the Dresden Dolls and whether she had any plans to reunite with drummer Brian Viglione. “We don’t have any plans, per say,” she tells me carefully. “Part of the problem is the label. Because with things in flux with the contract with the label, it’s impossible for us to say whether and what we can do because we’re still stuck. So that’s very frustrating. I love playing with Brian. When we got together to do the show this last winter, when Obama got inaugurated, it was such a reminder to us both that we’re just permanently locked in. We hadn’t played in for ever, for months and months and months, and we had a half hour sound check and then killed an entire set. I would be really surprised if we didn’t play together again, I just don’t know when and where, and how it is going to happen.”

Roadrunner Records seems a sore spot by now with Amanda, and she seems hesitant to talk about the situation with her record. Amanda battled with the label last year over the music video for her song Leeds United, which Roadrunner requested was cut to hide her stomach. Fans turned out to support Amanda, setting up The Rebellyon; a collection of photos of bellies â€“ big, small, fat and thin. Amanda’s constant struggle with the label has come to a standstill with their refusal to release her from her contract, meaning Amanda’s future with the Dresden Dolls and her own project are on hold, for now at least. However, I couldn’t resist asking whether she had any plans with Regina Spektor; “She’s very much her thing and I’m very much my thing. It’s like asking two people to make a bowl of cereal. You don’t necessarily need two,” she laughs. “I think what would be more fun is for us to play together, probably, rather than sit down and try and write together, because that to me just feels unnecessary. I’d love to get together with her in a studio and have a task. Like, cover this song by Van Halen and you’ve got ten hours, go, and see what happens.”

Amanda’s origins in performance go back to when she was a young girl, bashing on the keys of her mother’s out-of-tune piano. Over the years she changed her style, writing hundreds of songs which she keeps at home. In her twenties, Amanda worked as a living statue on the streets of Boston. “When I look back on it, I think that doing that kind of street performance gave me performance balls of steel. It gives you a real solid ground to stand on as a performer. Basically, when you stand on a box in a street for five years, and you deal with everything which goes along with that, which is a lot, you just have to be so comfortable in your own skin. Because you’re so vulnerable, you’re just literally painted white and standing there on a box and you feel completely weird. And slowly but surely you start to control it, your senses and your perception get very finely tuned. When I was working at the peak of my game, I could see someone taking their wallet out of their pants from fifty feet away, out of the corner of my eye and know it was coming, it really sharpened you. And it also makes you immune to ridicule, I was just completely zen. I think that going from that to stage, stage is a safe place to be, everyone there wants to see you, they’re not random passers by.”

Reliving those days, she mentions that she’s just seen the rough cuts for the silent movie she’s starring in, directed by Neil Gaiman and including Bill Nighy. “I play a bad living statue, which was liberating,” she explains, “a bad living statue that no one gives any money to, ever.” If you want to catch it, it’ll be on Sky Arts in the twelve days before Christmas as part of a silent movie theme.

The kind of creativity which has driven Amanda to write, act and paint herself white has spread to her fans, leading to her creation of the Post War Trade. “It’s basically a website and a nexus that would be fan-oriented, and art oriented. There really isn’t much profit involved, once you split up money with the artist and you pay for the manufacturing of something that’s unique and handcrafted. There’s really not much money in it, but it wasn’t really about the money to begin with; it was more about being able to say to someone, you can share your talent. And it would be awesome for other people.”

So how did it all get going? “It started a couple of years ago, because people were coming to shows all the time with handmade things, and some of them were really, really incredible, and I could tell that people were making multiples, or possibly could make multiples. So I thought, what a cool thing it would be to do an equivalent of etsy. And it still exists in its own little crazy way, and we’re constantly trying to build and move it. Things changed when I got Beth involved, because someone’s gotta be running it. It’s a big project, so she spends a lot of her time dealing with it – on top of being my assistant full time!”

Amanda’s philosophy of spreading creativity comes across on her website, which she regularly updates with new pieces of fan art. “I don’t necessarily weed for the top quality or the most technically gifted people, although when stuff comes through where the person is obviously a genius craftsman. I sometimes put up watercolours by six year olds, and really really earnest drawings by someone who may obviously be a self-taught artist who may not be ‘very good’, but their ideas are so fantastic that I like sharing it.”

So surely someone so creative must be doing something interesting for Halloween? I am going to be in Singapore with Neil who is at some kind of literary festival, and they’ve offered me a gig, so I took it. And I think they’re barely paying me anything, but they’re paying for my flight, or something. It’s basically a free trip to Singapore and I’m gonna be there anyway so I might as well play a gig. And I don’t know exactly what happens in Singapore on Halloween, but we’ll find out.”

With something so exciting, I ask if she’s in to horror films. “No, I can’t stand them”, she laughs. “I accidentally watched Seven with a friend of mine. He was like, ‘Oh, let’s just watch this, you’ll love it!’ I’d never heard of it, and I was like, ‘Is it good? What is it?’ ‘No, I’m not telling you anything, you’ll have to watch it, you’ll love it!’ And I was really unsettled and just pissed at him because I didn’t want to spend the next 24 hours with those images in my head. The only two horror movies that I can really say I’m a fan of are The Shining and The Exorcist. I just don’t like being deliberately unsettled when I’m already unsettled undeliberately so often.”

Jul

2012

Jason Webley

You started out busking after quitting your day job. Is this true? Do you remember what you were thinking when you decided to make such a change? What kind of job did you have before?
I’ve had a lot of jobs, but for the two years before I started busking I worked for an audio production company as an engineer. I honestly thought I was going crazy when I made that change. I didn’t really know what I was doing.

You seem to be really into your theatrics – I’ve read about your theme of dying every year at Halloween. Why did you start up that tradition, and what made you stop in the end?
That is a bit of a tricky one to talk about. It all sort of evolved naturally out of the music I was doing and the images that were in my mind at that time. I planned to keep doing it for a long time, but in the end it was a cycle that just lasted five years. I miss that whole dimension of my performances, but I still think it was the right time to stop when I did.

Are there any other big theatrical stunts you’ve been a part of, or created?
Sure… but I don’t really think of it that way – as theatrical stunts. I just get fun ideas and try to manifest them. Years ago I invited my fans to board a commuter ferry dressed as pirates. There were a couple hundred of us. It was really fun. Later a group of friends and I staged these tiny “musicals” in about 50 supermarkets in the Seattle area. That was really fun… another idea I want to do more with is puppet shows with giant puppets performed on freeway overpasses for the cars going by. We did something like that one year at Camp Tomato.

Personally, my favourite number is seven, but you have a real thing about the number eleven. I’d love to know why this is if you wouldn’t mind sharing?
Seven is ok. It rhymes with eleven at least. Eleven is just a nice number to say. Say it over and over a few times, it is like a little three syllable poem.

Can you tell me a bit about Camp Tomato? What goes on there? Why did it start? What are the plans for this year?
I started Camp Tomato right after I stopped dying. It is just a gathering of people to play weird games that I think of. We play “Tomato Raid” which is like “Capture the Flag” but instead of two teams and two flags, there are four teams and hundreds of tomatoes. Last year we had a new game called “Rhinoceros” where people get in refrigerator boxes and ram each other. That is my new favorite thing.

You have short stories on your website (which are wonderful by the way.) Do you do much in the way of writing (other than songs, of course)?
I wish I wrote more. I have a handful of other stories that aren’t up on the site, and I really hope to make a little book someday to collect them all.

Do you dabble in any other arts?
My music sometimes requires me to do other “art” things. For my shows, albums and videos, I’ve done drawings, photography, lino-cuts, puppet making, web design, stained glass window making and a bit robotic engineering. Well the robot was just a few modified remote control children’s toys .

Can you tell me a bit about the Evelyn Evelyn project for the readers?
It is my project with Amanda Palmer. She has a thing for the number 11 too. When I first toured with the Dresden Dolls, she told me she once thought to call the band “Eleven Eleven” but the name was taken. Then she said she also wanted to call it “Marsha Marsha Marsha” but that was taken too. I said, “what about ‘Evelyn Evelyn Evelyn’?” and she didn’t like that name, but after a moment she said “Evelyn Evelyn” would be a great name for a band.

I’m sure you’re sick of talking about it, and to be honest so am I, but can you please say a little about the controversy that’s surrounded the project? As far as I’m concerned you and Amanda have been nothing but graceful about the whole thing, it’d just be lovely if you could mention it.
I actually think the whole issue has been very interesting and I think that a lot of the problems people have expressed are actually very valid. I hadn’t thought of this as a project so much about disability, but it is a valid point that they bring up that often when disabled people are portrayed in popular culture, their role almost always fits into one of a very few stereotypes, and they are right that to a certain extent we have done the same thing with this project. I do think it is a pity that so many people got so upset about this before the album actually came out. Maybe I am wrong, but I think that the actual album stands up to this criticism a bit better than the “idea” of the album does. I also don’t feel badly about apologizing. I think we made some mistakes in how we were talking about the project. I know that I’ve learned a lot and hopefully will continue to from this criticism, and I hope that perhaps others will as well.

Looking to the future – do you have any plans for a new album after Evelyn Evelyn?
Yes. I just recorded a live album before I left Seattle that will hopefully come out in the fall. I also have a couple more collaboration projects in the works including an EP with my “party” band “Big Little Dipper Dipper”.

Jul

2012