Yesterday, Amanda Palmer (of the Dresden Dolls and also of a kind of brilliant solo album and recent collaboration with Jason Webley called Evelyn Evelyn) led an aggressive, Mel-Gibsoned Twitter campaign to make a big announcement: after several years of imbroglio with the less than supportive Road Runner Records, she has finally been dropped from the label. (I totally called the news when she posted the Gibson photo, though who’s taking score?)
To celebrate the occasion, Palmer released “The Truth,” a free download, featuring Jason Webley on guitar and Sam Kulik on trombone. The song is a story-of-everything-ever, in Amanda’s endearing kind of way; most of all, though, it celebrates freedom. You know you like freedom. And no matter what anyone says, I am not over this lady – she can keep oversharing, making clumsy comments and posting her trademark near-nudes willy nilly around the internet. It’s just a picture of a girl getting Twitterer.
The above is off Who Killed Amanda Palmer, and it is one of my favorites, as it celebrates one of my favorite kinds of humor. Have a good Thursday and try to be as awesome, please.
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Martha
/ April 8, 2010I find it really hard to want to have anything to do with an artist who’s so full of privilege she thinks it’s funny to make jokes about the KKK, and simulate rape on stage, and publicly mock “disabled feminists” and anyone else who objects to the things she does. At least for me, she’s said and done enough nasty, thoughtless things to make me think really, really badly of her.
Niina
/ April 8, 2010Martha, I do get your response. Palmer is really quick to react and (this is my impression) she’s often in the dark about the consequences of her kind of weird level of fame. But she is also a performer, and she has roots in the burlesque world, which is often dark and equilaterally offensive. I am generally really into the hyper-performative, especially when it makes light of issues people are uncomfortable with. At the same time, though, I don’t find her “political” in this way. She has an easy time navigating these topics, and maybe it is indeed privilege speaking. Nevertheless, the exuberance, the word-vomit and utter lack of premeditated publicist spin has an appeal that agrees with me.
Nevertheless, I did not get into this on the post itself, but I’m not a fan of the Evelyn Evelyn stuff, really. I think it’s somewhat twee and gimmicky and at times (same beef as yours, really) thoughtless.
MattKlomp
/ April 8, 2010Really digging Evelyn Evelyn — sounds a bit different from the Dresden Dolls stuff, but I think it’s awesome. The band’s myspace page has some really cool stuff up, definitely recommend checking it out. http://www.myspace.com/evelynevelyn