The Dresden Dolls Make-up

As a middle age man, I may be in rare company to be a music fan of the band called the Dresden Dolls. Their brazenly raw speak-easy lyrics might be mistaken for anti-establishment nursery rhymes when delivered beautifully overtop a piano soundtrack by lead singer Amanda Palmer. Although it is difficult to classify their music, their avant garde punk cabaret genre, if you will, often portrays social disturbia. Explicit songwriting finds an unlikely home to first orgasms, sex change operations, pornography, masturbation and mental illness. Not your typical Thanksgiving dinner conversation, the taboo subject matter makes a place setting for carving raw emotions. Their lyrics conjure the flawed humaneness in a troubled society to which its youth can identify.

Amanda Palmer's expressive voice covers powerful topics with unbridled passion. She sings like a cutting edge compliment to Tori Amos with the ranging voicebox of Happy Rhodes. Listening to the music of the Dresden Dolls is both a haunting and hypnotic experience, difficult to explain but with a distorted reality certainty that you are engaged. Amanda Palmer's voice seduces you with a resonating paralytic quality that lulls you into a false sense of security. Like a semstress of song, she then beats you with a pillow before you look up to notice your blood on the casing's underside. You know too little too late how the blood got there but it is a moot point since you strangely enjoyed your time.

In other words, if I were decades younger and addressing a contemporary audience about this band's music, I might say "Omg wtf those Dresden Dolls are f-in banging. I'm listening my a$$ off. They emo kill it, do you feel me?"