aaamusic | On 05, Sep 2011

London, 02/09/2011

Fun. It’s a vastly underrated attribute to anything. When something is deemed “Fun”, usually it means that the thing in question is mildly diverting at best, cool but with no substance, all mouth and a pair of groovy trousers but nothing that will stay with you for longer than it takes to marvel at just how cool whatever it was that took your fancy was in the first place. In essence there is nothing strictly wrong with this but it’s become something of a faux pas, especially in music, to do something unashamedly fun and expect to be taken seriously afterwards. To be taken seriously in music one usually has to be utterly po-faced, or at least make less than subtle hints at a dark side that can only exorcised through the medium of pop music. Like “fun”, there’s a place for this as well but sometimes the stars align and pop stars can be taken seriously and look like utter clowns at the same time. Madness did it in the 80’s, Blur very briefly did it in the 90’s and My Chemical Romance have only just learned how to do it, and then there’s the Other. There’s the woman who has spent her career doing exactly what she wants to do, a woman who’s written songs about depression, abortion and school shootings, who once described her music as “Brechtian Punk Cabaret”, a woman who has taken a look at what it means to be “taken seriously in the music industry”, spat in its face and is currently doing the running man onstage in a central London gay club to strains of The Safety Dance. This is Amanda Palmer, and that’s Amanda Fucking Palmer to you.

 

AFP has made a living (by her admission, only just) out of having the courage to do exactly as she wishes for pretty much her whole career, which extends to a relatively haphazard approach to preparing her live shows. To call what happens in the bowels of Charing Cross Station professional is laughable, songs are restarted multiple times, banter goes on for far too long than is intended and some collaborations haven’t even been sound-checked, let alone rehearsed. But that is entirely the point. It’s rough, it’s unprepared, it requires quite a lot of patience on behalf of the audience at some points because that’s how AFP makes her show as honest and exciting as she is. One particularly astute comment on her extensive blog said something along the lines of  “You may bullshit rehearsals, but you never bullshit the performance.” Palmer herself couldn’t have put it better and tonight is proof of the cast iron truth of those aforementioned words.

 

Taking to the stage in sparkly duds requested from fans on her twitter, and with her band The Grand Theft Orchestra decked out in a similar fashion, the trio (AFP alongside Michael McQuilken on drums/everything else under the sun and Guitarist/synth player Chad Raines) thunder out the opening track of Palmers debut solo album Astronaut, it’s dramatic, it’s melodic, it’s loud as fuck and staggeringly good. The slight rust that was on display last week at the Edinburgh Picture House has been not so much shrugged off as thrown into the sun, and it only gets better when McQuilkin starts rattling some tell-tale cymbals and Palmer plays a familiar arpeggio on her keyboard, before the band launches into a plutonium powered version of The Dresden Dolls’ biggest hit Girl Anachronism, which, somewhat understandably, sends the capacity crowd completely bananas.

 

If all of this is sounding a bit mechanical to you then it should please you to know that the gig also features Neil Gaiman singing a song about a resurrected Joan of Arc, a song about Palmers pubic hair played on the Ukelele, the aforementioned Safety Dance sequence during which belly dancing support act Super Kate warms the crowd up for a string of four new songs that sees Palmer surrendering to her “inner 80’s” with synths up the proverbial arse, counter culture legend Tom Robinson and Tim shitting Minchin showing up to play songs in between Palmers masterful missives on her less than humdrum life. Y’know, just in case you thought that this would be like anything approaching a normal rock show

 

And the best part of the evening is the sheer, delirious fun the whole shebang is. Two hours hurtle by in a blitz of colour, sparkly garments, fantastic songs and the sheer star power of Amanda Palmer holding it all together with no room for any brow furrowing or hand-wringing whatsoever (Well, very little room for any brow furrowing and hand-wringing, there was a Radiohead cover in there somewhere). And as everyone who’s graced the stage tonight collectively loses their shit to closing number Leeds United, from support acts Bitter Ruin and The Jane Austen Argument to Neil Gaiman (with fetching tinsel boa) to violinist Una Palliser, one realises that there are precious few people quite like Amanda Palmer, there are very few people who can balance fun and seriousness like she can, there are very few people that can make a confessional lyric sound life affirming like she can and there are very few live shows that I can continuously write about until six in the morning and not mention half the crazy, genius stuff that goes on. Truly, this world belongs to Amanda Fucking Palmer. And we’re quite blessed to live in it.

Author: Will Howard