Lorna Irvine is unimpressed with her recent run-in.
"I AM AMANDA FUCKING PALMER,YEAH? YA HEAR,DOUCHEBAGS? I ROCK! WHERE ARE YOU GOING? LOOK- I'LL SHOW YA MY TITS,AND EVERYTHING!"
Thus runs a typical interview with (at least in her mind) cabaret sweetheart, Amanda Palmer, The Little Goth Who Couldn't (Hold A Tune In A Bag).
One half of erstwhile cult favourites Dresden Dolls and now solo, La Palmer, married to writer Neil Gaiman (as she will tell anyone who listens) is as big a pain in the ass as Courtney Love used to be before the world in general tired of her self-aggrandising crap. The Dolls were never half as interesting as they thought they were, like some marketing man heard the Cabaret soundtrack and went, "Let's redo this, with a really skanky duo but no depth, soul or originality."
Full of her own self-importance, yet not terrifically talented (I once had the deeply unappealing experience of hearing Palmer murder Fake Plastic Trees on Jonathan Ross' radio show-it was akin to someone playing a tape back to me of me singing a Sinatra retrospective) pretty much all of Aussie Palmer's songs are like a ten year old's description of Tim Burton films, with clichéd horror imagery and in every promo shot she is either in a bra, naked, topless or spreading her legs. Desperately trying to re-affirm how sexy she is (and we all know how attractive that is) like a porn star gone to (ahem) seed, every other word she utters is sexual or a sweary word. Her recent moniker is Amanda Fucking Palmer- wow, outrageous...She is like a backwoods teenager trying to be Gothic, outrageous and controversial- all of which would be bad enough, but she is a grown woman of forty...she claims.
Her latest venture since leaving the Dolls is to launch her own crowdsourcing service for her own music, the irony being you couldn't pay me to listen to it. She declared 'I am the future of music"- really, Mandy? Why then is your sound so dated? Recent single Do It With A Rock Star rhymes 'Middle East' with 'cavities', which is actually quite a special skill. A truly appalling song, it tries to be all things to all people- Britpop (only nineteen years too late, love) Riot Grrrl (ditto) and pop, despite having no discernable tune or hook. Mostly though, she sounds like Hazel O' Connor, which is never good.
Then there are the public appearances- she did a Rocky Horror song, Science Fiction Double Feature on a late night US TV show, which would be bad enough but was in another skimpy costume with armpit hair you could braid. Okay, fine, that is personal choice, but you get the feeling that it's another bid for attention, as with so many of her gestures, such as celebrating, according to an interview in June's Stool Pigeon, reaching one million hits on her website by going topless. Ooh, how radical, like everyone from Josephine Baker to Lee Miller, Yoko Ono to Lady Gaga hadn't done that first. Yawn. We have all seen them, dear, and there ain't much there. Don't shake what your Mama gave you if there isn't much in the first place.
Oh, I know this sounds catty, like a bitter woman decrying another woman, but if you are not especially talented, don't use nudity as currency...Marianne Faithful was a lovely singer, still is, and weathered the storms of heroin addiction, in spite of being depicted as little more than a starfucker by the press when she was so much more and being abandoned, full of junk, by the very awful Mick Jagger, to fend for herself. She was entitled to nudity, because she survived, she was an icon and an ex-convent girl. Amanda Palmer will never reach the iconic status she clearly craves, because she lacks the charm, chutzpah and ideas.
Naked ambition for its own sake and just getting naked is never enough. Poor, deluded, FUCKING pet.
Disclaimer: These are the opinions of one writer, and not necessarily that of Across The Arts...I am right, though!
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