A man and a woman onstage, with an ambiguous sexual tension between them. A riveting singer/multi-instrumentalist and a near-silent drummer. A signature look and musical roots in a bygone style. No, we're not talking about those kandy-kolored kids from Detroit. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
maybe it was, as drummer Brian Viglione suggests, "fated" that he and pianist/vocalist Amanda Palmer met at a Haloween party in 2000. It would certainly make sense considering Viglione and plamer, the dynamic duo that is The dresden Dolls, appear at live shows wearing costumes that look as if they have crawled from the darlest corner of a Weimar-era cabaret... READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Life is a Cabaret... AMANDA PALMER of the Dresden Dolls "At this moment, my most memorable experience is probably the chocolate I just ate." READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
f you ask the Dresden Dolls where they got their name from, this is what they’ll tell you: Dresden is a city in eastern Germany that was known widely for it’s delicate china and porcelain, and for the delicate and innocent “dresden dolls” made from said stuffs. Ironically, many people also associate Dresden with the not-so-delicate firebombing that took place at the hands of the allies towards the very end of WWII in 1945, practically leveling the entire inner city (and it’s unparalleled architectural beauty) within a few short days and killing thousands of men, women and children.” READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Boston goth duo channels Marlene Dietrich and Cabaret. Singer-pianist Amanda Palmer, 28, and drummer Brian Viglione, 25, formed their goth-cabaret duo in 2000 after meeting at a loft party in Boston... READ COMPLETE ARTICLE .
Boston punk-cabaret duo the Dresden Dolls are the current poster children for nonconformists hoping to make it in the big bad music business. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
The Dresden Dolls hold the unique distinction of having been hand-picked by Trent Reznor for the Nine Inch Nails comeback tour. Metro speaks with pianist and vocalist Amanda Palmer about the honor. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
A little more than a year ago, the Dresden Dolls got their first ink in this paper for a show at the venerable-but-tiny Frederick's Music Lounge. Six months later they were at the mid-size Mississippi Nights. Now, they're taking a break from opening for Nine Inch Nails to play at the big ol' Pageant. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Trent Reznor now looks like Greg Dulli acts. Dude is buff all of a sudden -- BALCO'd out and shit. Towering over his adoring legions Thursday night at the Warfield, the Nine Inch Nails frontman's muscles glistened with pro wrestler intensity and confidence. A momentary triumph of animal lust over superhuman self-loathing, he has mastered the art of disguising the latter as the former. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
FROM THE LOOKS of the eerie blue "living statue" offering roses one balmy night outside Cafe du Nord last August, it's clear something unusual awaits the long line of revelers shuffling past in striped stockings and vinyl. Pan downstairs into the venerable basement venue, where the curtains have closed on a sinister puppet show about a megalomaniac tree. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Cabaret Punk? Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill on a bender at CBGB's? It's hard to nail down just what Boston's Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione sound like, but in a few short years they have risen from coffee house obscurity to play over 100 shows a year.. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE .
The music of the Dresden Dolls defies categorization. Is the Boston duo cabaret-pop? Baroque-punk? Tori Amos and Lene Lovich on a Gothic bender? Vaudevillian rock? READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Tired of the same old thing? Punk and rock bands with the same hairstyles and fashion sense are everywhere. Many current bands seem to be a carbon copy of something else that was "cool" decades ago. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
When the Lollapalooza tour was canceled last summer, one of the bigger casualties would seem to have been the Dresden Dolls. For an emerging act like the Dresden Dolls, Lollapalooza promised to be quite a coming out party — a chance each day for the Boston-based duo to play in front of thousands of people who otherwise might never be introduced to the group's dynamic live show. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
A duo that dons stark white panckae makeup and bowler hats and melds German Cabaret music with the raw energy of punk rock isn't the type of outfit you'd expect to sell out shows and cultivate a near-army of devoted fans. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Punk-rock cabaret duo the Dresden Dolls will take their theatrical stage show on the road as the sole opening act on Nine Inch Nails' upcoming North American tour. As previously reported, the trek begins on April 27 in San Francisco and will run through the end of May. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
When the Dresden Dolls won Boston's WBCN Rock & Roll Rumble battle of the bands in 2003, it signaled the end of the beginning. Rising up from the city's art world, the band started out performing gigs at art galleries and art parties. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
When I hear something totally unexpected in music come along, sometimes I try to imagine what the discussion at the record company sounded like. Someone said to someone else: “You know what music needs? A German cabaret sound!” The reply: “I’m sold! I’ll find ‘em!” READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Ask Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione, a.k.a. The Dresden Dolls, if they believe in fate and their mouths break out into big, gooey smiles that threaten to consume both faces whole. "Oh, yeah!" Amanda exclaims. "Uh-huh!" Brian exclaims. "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," their eyes exclaim in unison. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
So, the last time I chatted with Amanda Palmer from The dresden Dolls, it was via telephone. But at that time, The dresden Dolls were only on the cusp of exploding within the indie rock world. Since then, they've signed to a major label (the almost exclusively metal Roadrunner) been added to the lineup of Coachella, and been tapped tp open some dates for Nine Inch Nails in Europe. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
"It's like a device. I compare it to actors thraditionally wearing masks onstage. It's not that we're playing characters, but there's something about becoming kind of a blank slate that allows an audience to really lean in and relate more," says Dresden Dolls songwriter-vocalist-pianist Amanda Palmer. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
They call their music "Brechtian punk cabaret," and that's not a bad description, but the Boston-based piano-and-drums duo The Dresden Dolls might be best described as pre-rock punk rock. Pianist-singer Amanda Palmer and drummer Brian Viglione bash their way through Weimar Republic-style beer-hall stomps and piano-based rock, with Palmer's depressive lyrics and dramatic vocal style (sort of a more tuneful Nico) as the gateway into a compelling picture of obsession and depression, served up (mostly) with a smile.. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Boston's Dresden Dolls sound like chipping paint and brittle porcelain. They muse for the Victrola. They film videos for Earth's largest zoetrope. They tripped the flux capacitor to a 1930s German cabaret and rocked out Marty McFly-style. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Dresden Dolls bizarre marriage for punk-rock intensity and Goth-y cabaret style is hard to resist. In fact, vocalist/pianist Amanda Palmer and drummer Brian Viglione are now big enough to headline the Theatre of the Living Arts... READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
With their jones for Kurt Weill and 30's cabaret, thier white-faced homage to mimes (singer-pianiat Amanda Palmer even studied briefly with legendary mime Marcel Marceau) and, of course, their Teutonic handle, The Dresden Dolls have "import" stamped all over their sound - and their highly theatrical schtick. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Last week, I heard a Channel 104.9 DJ lead-in to the Dresden Dolls single "Coin-Operated Boy" with a cheeky warning. "Here's either the most loved or most hated song." For those unaware, "Coin-Operated Boy" is a piano and drums ditty about isolation cloaked in what best can be described as Weimarian punk cabaret. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
You’re standing twenty feet from the stage at Bowery Ballroom in New York City, and your favorite band begins to play your favorite song. You’ve forsaken things like groceries and the electricity bill because getting a ticket for tonight is like groceries or electricity for your soul. And now the moment is upon you. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
The Dresden Dolls are like nothing else. This is one band no one can label generic or tired. Dresden Dolls is compromised of vocalist and pianist Amanda Palmer and drummer Brian Viglione READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
When the Lollapalooza tour was canceled this summer, one of the bigger casualties would seem to have been the Dresden Dolls. For an emerging act like the Dresden Dolls, Lollapalooza promised to be quite a coming out party a chance each day for the Boston-based duo to play in front of thousands of people who otherwise might never be introduced to the group's dynamic live show. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Let's face it: if you're a rock band based in Beantown, you've got more than one pair of skin-tight leather trousers to fill. If the bar band-turned-stadium-filling paleontologiy exhibit on wheels known as Aerosmith isn't enough of an intimidator, meditate on this lineage: The Modern Lovers. The Cars. The Pixies. You can hear snippets of all 3 in just about every song on modern rock radio today (in addition to several albums worth of enduring classics by all 3 of the groups themselves). READ COMPLETE ARTICLE READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Usually, out of the hundreds of bands that play Austin's South by Southwest music convention every year, one emerges victorious -- hit single, hit video in hand. So far from this year's festival, that one band has been Franz Ferdinand, a Glasgow pop-rock quartet whose big splash at SXSW is being credited for the band's subsequent success. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Apparently, there's only one thing more fashionable than slapping on some white face paint, donning the ol' bowler hat and indulging in some baroquely realized eyebrows: managing your own band while running an independent record label...... READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Equal parts rock, goth, punk, cabaret, opera and vaudville, The Dresden Dolls - Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione - are not typical New Englanders..... READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Breaking Out of the Doll House The Dresden Dolls inspire with their unique style of music Most theater-goers are familiar with the Brechtian style of theater, in which a play attempts to get into the audience members' minds instead of their hearts. Such plans often reaching towards complex philosophical questions, following the style of the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. But a Brechtian punk cabaret? READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
In the summer of 2002 I met Amanda when she was performing with Brian at one of her famous Box parties. This was the first time I saw The Dresden Dolls play, outside in their garden, to a very absorbed and unique crowd of friends. I remember what caught my ears first, beyond the great songwriting, were the spaces between the notes, and the vast difference between the silences and the intensity......... READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
The woman onstage doesn't look like a small-business owner. Her legs are spread and she's pummeling a piano. The harried young businesswoman is singing about a coin-operated boy, which would really simplify her love life. She is locked in a scary and delicious gaze with the drummer, whose face is painted white, and this helps her forget about the bookkeeping........ READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Last week the Dresden Dolls opened their new band office in Chinatown, taking over a prime space that was formerly occupied by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. At their inaugural party, you couldn't miss the sense that a whole new style was moving in: next to the Bosstones' gold records on the walls hung the Dolls' artful gig flyers and their abstract paintings and silkscreens of group members Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione in various guises. Even their choice of refreshments -- red wine and sushi instead of beer and Red Bull -- indicated that the Dolls were throwing a different kind of party....... READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
The Dresden Dolls, a duet featuring Amanda Palmer on keys (you might know her as the bride of Harvard Square) and her partner in mime, Brian Viglione, on drums, have been executing quirky, cathartic cabaret-rock in galleries and clubs around town to extremely receptive audiences....... READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Best Live Band ...Dresden Dolls have shattered notions about what packs the city's rock clubs READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Getting the incomparable Gene Dante to host tonight's show was a stroke of pure genius. The sexy, sweet 'n' bratty thespian has just earned oodles of kudos for bringing Hedwig to Boston, and tonight he's busting out his trademark charm and zeal to turn All the Queen's Men's Curvy Baby CD release into a real event............. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
The Boston music scene may have its foundations built solidly on pop and rock music but there has never been wanting in bands that failed to be easily incorporated into the mainstream fold and yet still kept tongues a wagging. One of the more recent additions to the "I don't know what you'd call it, but you've got to hear them!" category is the Dresden Dolls......and won this years WBCN Rock-n-Rumble. READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
When we last visited Amanda Palmer in our "Best" issue, she was in her guise as "the Seven-Foot Bride" -- a towering apparition in Harvard Square, swathed in white, painted in white face makeup, expressionless, waiting for a donation before bending to offer a flower in silent thanks. Since then, Palmer has become an impresario of the underground...... READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
It won't take more than a song or two before you learn what The Dresden Dolls fans have known since day one: this is not your ordinary rock band. Brian Viglione on drums and Amanda Palmer on keys and vocals make music that's at once beautiful, disturbing, visual, and accessible...... READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Plays with Dolls Where Rock Meets Theater, You'll Find Amanda Palmer....... READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
The Dresden Dolls, meanwhile, take Mantler's art-song leanings to the Violent Femmes end of American pop, with tales of romantic desperation and sexual confusion (the Replacements' "Androgynous" made an appearance) delivered in spare arrangements for drums, keyboard, and voice........ READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
Expert's Picks for the Hottest Spring Events..... READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
