Dresden Dolls - Yes, Virginia

I wish it had as much of the fuck-you gusto as the first record, and also took some great leaps forward sonically...

But it easily consolidates the achievements from that first slighty scrappy in places s/t (though the opening track is a total retread and it could lose a track or two in the running length). It's probably better totalled up, but it'll need more listens yet.

God damn if this band don't really make me believe in them somehow! SO many rock bands seem to expect me to give a shit, because well, that's how rock works or something...

God, Amanda's such a GREAT lyricist. Intelligent, confrontational, pithy & pointed, inward -and- outward looking, but also just very fucking funny. Her singing's come on in leaps & bounds range-wise too.

The closing track is a real surprise. Their most nakedly emotional, anthemic, accessible and genuinely touching song ever. It's ... their "Everybody Hurts" :-O (ILM you can puke now)

Still, good songs and lyrics, although Amanda still sounds a bit uncomfortable doing the chirpier pop stuff.

I like the promo cover better:

http://www.thephoenix.com/OnTheDownload/content/binary/DresdenDolls400.jpg

It's not at all terrible, it's very decent. But I may have been hoping for something like the collosal brick to the face of the second PJ Harvey record? Not something that's just a smoother version of the debut.

I like the promo cover better too. I would have bought that last week when I saw it if it hadn't been double the price!

it's weird b/c so much of the stuff was on their live album or i've already heard -- this album makes me really nostalgic in a way for what wasn't a particularly great time in my life, but where i did listen to and enjoy the dolls quite a bit. it's like happy songs can stay with you forever, but melancholy music needs to constantly be renewed.

but yeah. "yes, virginia" is incredibly solid both in songwriting and production, and being that it's their grasp at rock stardom it's suitably accessible, though i think "modern moonlight" and "sex changes" and "dirty business" and many others have as much punky venom as anything on the debut or the early bootlegs/self released live discs. it's my favorite album of 2006, though TVOTR is running a close second/tied for first place.

true, but it's not like it would require them to fly. ah well, i'm just majorly disappointed, that's all.

mp3 here:
http://download.yousendit.com/7F5A3F7B6A7A2DA4

Sounds great to me after a couple of listens. Lots of spite and spikiness. There's evidence of a bigger budget, the keyboards sound is fuller, but it's definitely the same band. The feel of the songs is mid-way between the first album and the ballads on the 'A is for Accident' live disc, which reflects the range of their set.

Hasn't been a band emerge over the last few years I've liked half as much. Looking forward to seeing them perform it live in May.

Anecdotal evidence suggested that she went through a pretty nasty case of writers' block for a long time, to the extent that I was worried about her even getting it together enough to write a second DD album. As a result, I reserve judgement about them as long-term "career" artists (not to mention signing to the band-killing Roadrunner Records - Sheila Divine, anyone?), but I hope for the best.

Yeah, I had picked up the writer's block thing, and it was a concern that half the titles on the new album had been around for quite a while. The new stuff on the record seems quite as good as anything she's ever written, so hopefully it was just angst and she's over it.

go nuts

Amanda's lyrics are good enough to put on an Otto's Daughter album.

Okay, sign me up.

Hah! They certainly have their demographic sewn up.

Erm. Looks pretty goth to me. Everyone I know who pimps their records is goth, semi-goth, or goth (ret.). They're called the Dresden Dolls (that's circumstantial, I know, but given all of the other evidence).

Also: is it time for TS: Dresden Dolls vs. Cabaret Voltaire?

also,
Dresden dolls are back in style
With a clockwork walk and a backward smile
Dresden dolls dont hear a sound
Theyre programmed to jump up and down

Up and down
Round and round
Tapping feet to formless sound

Dresden dolls and nazi boys
Dance arm in arm to formless noise
Up and down
Round and round
Tapping feet to formless sound

On plastic bars they sit and pose
Count their fingers with their toes
They sit and smile and drink and grin
Then they all get up again

Up and down
Round round
Tapping feet to noiseless sound

Dresden dolls are back in style
With a clockwork walk and a backward smile
Up and down
Pound and round
Tapping feet to formless sound

A gimp!

http://www.minga.de/archives/rockyhps.jpg

ARE THEY GOTHS OR ARE THEY MIMES?

http://www.trashcity.org/BLITZ/BLIT0340.JPG

http://2004.sxsw.com/music/showcases/pages/photos/dresden_dolls.jpg

http://www.jacneed.com/PhotoFile/Marcel_Marceau.jpg

http://www.addict3d.org/img/a292f305f8951ece.jpg

Amanda does. As mentioned upthread, prior to Dresden, she was most well-known in Boston/Cambridge as a "live statue" artist - dressing up in EXTREMELY stylized pantomime bridal getup, making extremely minimal movements from atop a pedestal, and handing out flowers/petals to passers-by in Harvard Square for hours on end. She has many other art/performance connections, but this is her most (in)famous.

yeah! I have a cd of 'happy' around here & used to have their other record on tape but not anymore. they were good - well, the one girl's songs were good, dana kletter. she also sang backup on hole's 'live through this' if I'm not mistaken.

dresden dolls are theater goths, sure, but it seems to me this kind of music is precisely what theater goths ought to do - self-aware and funny.

I mean, goth to me is, like, heavy and British and an eighties thing. I hear pianos I don't think 'goth', I think 'band geek'.

Then I figured she said something else and I just misheard, but all internet lyric transcriptions seem to think that it's "post it to the noise board."

"Load" records, indeed. This is some haw-haw collective of performance-art types, wearing throw rugs and mop-wigs on the cover, playing oscillators, loops and video game sound effects, and it sucks harder than a two-dollar crack whore. The first "number" is a one-note synth fart, held for a solid minute. And it's the best thing on here. There are long stretches that sound like leaky faucets, tests of the Emergency Broadcast System, and elderly people coughing up hairballs. Six tracks and twenty minutes in, you finally hear a beat, not that a beat could redeem this catastrophe. Almost looks like they're selling it as a sci-fi concept album, but there are no vocals or liner notes, and even the press sheet is one big, pointless Fuck-You to the general public. They list fake names (smart move), and thank a buncha people with fake names too. These guys should learn that the bigger the in-joke, the less funny it is. To think that they actually sat around attaching song titles to this puddle of misery is mind-blowing. Someone sank big money into the thing, but there's no way that even the band members listen to it. Helen Keller could make a better record in her sleep, and she's dead. Honestly, these people should be ashamed. (Joe Coughlin)

(a) yes
(b) sometimes

open your heart unto me,
j.o.n.

No, that is correct, I have the official cd with the liner notes.

Snarky Boston scenester hangout. Hate it.

http://www.thenoiseboard.com/index.php?showtopic=24684

-- nervous (forests.forest...), April 16th, 2006 11:16 PM.

I WIN:
http://www.fueledbyramen.com/panic/tour/top.gif

post it to the noise board

Now, I forgot Yes, Virginia even exists really but that's an insulting support slot. I hope Dresden Dolls embarrass them every damn night of the tour.

whaaaaaa!? no wai

I love the Fringe far too much to be allowed to live here.