Amanda Palmer comes down for a quick catch-up: old songs, new songs, New Zealand survival songs.From her own description of the brief three date tour. She is working on a new Dresden Dolls album, and we do get a preview of that tonight.
But since this is Amanda Fucking Palmer, we are in for a night of raw naked emotions and a sharing of the trials and trauma of what went down when she found herself stranded on a desert(ed) island at the arse end of the world during covid lockdown madness.
Since she is being so honest and open, so can we. New Zealand can be considered deserted, as it is a big country with a relatively sparse population. Similar land mass to UK which is 65 million.
It is also a very long distance to reach. Our trademark brands are the All Blacks, Queenstown and being mistaken for Australians. The haka is famous because of rugby.
My first Palmer concert was on March 16, 2020, at the Hollywood Theatre. She was ending a massive 80 date tour of the world with the last 4 shows in New Zealand at the tail end. The arse end, naturally.
This was the There Will Be No Intermissions tour. Based on her recent album of the same name. It was a deep dive exploration into her own history and psyche, and it was an emotional, ribald and uncensored Ride.
This show takes off from that point. She was stranded here with her young son for 30 months. As the world came under dark shadows of fear, lies and a cold virus.
This coincided in a world falling apart for Palmer too. Her marriage broke up in New Zealand and she was left alone with a five-year-old son. It was survival mode as her latest EP title reveals.
She was bunkered down in Havelock North (always gets a laugh, says Palmer) and then the real tiny island of Waiheke.
From there she put herself back together, With a Little Help From My Friends. Strangers who became friends, too.
It helped that she didn’t sing out of tune. But she could be loud, passionate, and wild with her voice. Imagine Friends! being banshee-wailed by Diamanda Galas.
She arrives late to her own show, and the story to that encapsulates the complicated experience that is being and living here.
Traffic clogging trying to leave Devonport, a two-and-a-half-hour trip. Missing a ferry by minutes trying to find an escape route.
Having experienced that twice last year, it feels like your soul is being sucked down a vortex.
She bounds on stage looking only mildly dishevelled. Her hair styling still looks fabulous.
Grabs her familiar ukulele and sings a ditty about how the whole day can turn to shit. I’m not exactly the person I want to be. At the end she confesses that she is exactly the person she wants to be.
At the piano, she launches into a song which could be called Winter and Autumn or possibly Shut Me Up. Anger in her voice and the piano is attacked as a percussion weapon. Reminds me of John Cale the wild Welsh Velvet.
I’m in hell/ I still love my husband. Passionate and Wilde.
Australia carries on in similar fashion. Her songs are often structured like novels. She mines a similar artistic intent to that other Velvet, Lou Reed.
There is a semi-confession in that she may love Australia more than New Zealand. Perfectly fine, as out in the real world no one can tell the difference.
The Man Who Ate Too Much. First song off her EP New Zealand Survival Songs, and the product of the first lockdown in March 2020. When her husband Neil Gaiman (Sandman graphic novels) walked out, and she suffered panic attacks.
A song of desperation and dislocation. Fear and Loathing in song form. Imagery of a stingray hacked to bits, and a boy asks where his dad is.
Palmer directly addresses the psychic damage wrought by the pronounced pandemic on The Ballad of the New York Times. From her own unravelling personal level, and from the atmosphere we all share which became toxic and malevolent.
It could be a reference to the Phil Ochs album All the News That’s fit to Sing (1964)
References to the daily death toll as kept by mainstream media. Intertwined with her own story. Also shares something with the Beatles A Day in the Life. The opening piano parts and the cryptic narrative which keeps shifting.
I don’t understand which part of me can be so goddam unkind/ I don’t understand why I am tired all the time.
She sings about a holocaust. For ants. One of the best songs currently about the severe psychic dislocations imposed on the Western world over this period, and its repercussions at the deeply personal level.
Julia Deans is the first guest to appear. She sings a new song addressed to her diagnosis of cancer in 2016. She does reassure us she is fine now.
Haunting voice which climbs to the home on high. As wrenching and beautiful as the stuff Warren Zevon produced when he was dying of cancer. Try the version of Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.
Aurelia Torkington is introduced and sings her own song which addresses rape and recovery. Quite raw and heavy, but beautifully sung in a breathy folk style. All I know of her is that her father plays a mean Bluegrass banjo.
She sings harmony on Whakanewha, off Palmer’s current EP. The name comes from a nature reserve on Waiheke Island.
It is dark but with a detached air which reflects tragic events subsumed. Another suicidal mess/ Landing on my doorstep thanks a ton. Until we come to the confrontation. I wanted to live with you/ But fuckin’ A fuck you/ No one on earth could live like this.
This is the one song from her New Zealand exile that will make the cut on the upcoming Dresden Dolls album.
She does preview another one from that project. I took up with a lover/ A fighter/ A runner/ A writer. This is with piano only. With the drummer added it may sound like a Bo Diddley. More Love Is Strange than Bo Diddley’s a Gunslinger.
Selina Tusitala Marsh, New Zealand’s former Poet Laureate, reads a poem. Tusitala means storyteller in Samoan. The appellation was given to Robert Louis Stevenson, who was laid to rest on the Pacific Island.
She covers Paul Kelly’s I Can’t Believe We Were Married. Singing about dancing in the kitchen to Marvin Gaye. The phrasing is all Paul Simon bouncing Folk Pop.
There is also On an Unknown Beach, written by New Zealand artist Peter Jefferies. More a cult figure in this country, who did play in This Kind of Punishment. Generally downbeat and a quiet creep of a song.
Amanda Palmer closes the show with her nicest tribute to New Zealand, Little Island. With Julia Deans on harmony vocals and they both raise the heat and passion in their voices.
It may have been a little too long. But it closes a loop on what has been a very strange, wild, and treacherous time in world history. Amanda Palmer reveals herself, and by doing so leads us to look at the truth as well. Like the best artists can.
Rev. Orange Peel