I don’t know why, but I was not ready to love or like Amanda Palmer when I went to see her perform at Amoeba on Sunday night,… I don’t know, all the hype about her over-publicized Kickstarter campaign, the exhibitionist style and all these stories about her not paying musicians, then paying them, I had already heard too much about Amanda fucking Palmer before going.
But now I believe all the hype, she and her Grand Theft Orchestra are totally fantastic live! And you may like them too if you like chaos, musical minimalism and armpit hair. With Amanda, it’s all about throwing a party with toy piano, percussion knives and mini ukulele and not caring a bit about what people may think of her,… she does what she wants with strong confidence all show long.
She appeared on stage with a long black-bra-revealing-gold dress, whose thin straps were always falling down, a general-military hat and two large knives she used as percussion during ‘The Killing Type’ off her last album ‘Theater Is Evil’, while singing with a bold and angry tone… it was difficult to look at anything else, she was the spectacle, making faces, playing her punk-cabaret character, hammering every syllable of her songs, looking a little weird and mad with her painted eyebrows, but don’t get me wrong, despite the scary knives and the gothic look, she was charming and instantaneously likeable.
I had never been to a proper Amanda Palmer show, so I don’t know if it is an habit, as her set at Amoeba just consisted of a few songs, but her grand orchestra was very minimalist, playing with a few miniature instruments, and even some buckets. After just one song, they embarked into two ‘naughty’ 90s covers, and this wasn’t negligible considering they only played 6 songs altogether.
Kneeling on stage, Amanda was holding her banjo player by the waist during most of ‘Polly’, giving the best banjo blowjob people had ever seen. The Radiohead cover was cleaner and quieter, and at this point I was wondering whether they would play some of their own songs. But may be that was the point, all the lesbian couples who were surrounding me (I had to mention it!) were here to see Her perform, whatever the music she would play, whatever the songs she would sing.
Nevertheless, they finally played a few Palmer’s new songs, engaging the crowd into foot-tapping and hand-clapping during the megaphone number, ‘Lost'. Buckets were thrown in the air and at this point they weren't caring anymore how the music really sounded. They were back with a more stomping-angry-banjo style for ‘Want it Back’, and Amanda didn’t want to finish up before singing, alone, her funny ukulele anthem after promoting her future shows …Is this the woman that Steve Albini called an idiot?
It was a short performance, and as expected it was more about performance than about music,… to be honest, I wasn’t a fan of her music when I heard it online, but the songs really breathed a new life when Amanda Palmer sang them in front of me. She was outrageous, loud and funny, and for all this, quite unique, proving she is certainly much more than a clever fundraiser! And she knows, with all that energy she sweats on stage, how to please people and give them what they want.
Setlist
The Killing Type
Polly (Nirvana’s cover)
Idioteque (Radiohead’s cover)
Lost
Want It Back
Ukulele Anthem