Pop Culture Picks: Amanda Palmer
The former Dresden Doll and controversial rockstar/performance artist/internet headline machine will be performing at the Sydney Festival in January. But first, she has some great recommendations.
‘Pop Culture Picks’ is our new regular feature where cool people fill us in on their favourite things. This instalment: Amanda Palmer.
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C’mon, do we really need an introduction here? Since rising to prominence as one-half of cabaret rockers The Dresden Dolls, Amanda Palmer’s pretty much become an internet headline machine: she’s a Twitter fixture, she’s done ‘TED Talks’, and her Wikipedia list of “controversies” is almost as long as her discography, including such memorable moments as that whole “crowdsourcing musicians” fiasco and her “poem for dzhokhar” (one of the Boston Marathon bombers).
In less scandalous news, the musician’s most recent solo album, Theatre Is Evil, scored impressive reviews following its release late last year; The Guardian compared it to “sitting on the bed of your tattooed, far cooler cousin 30 years ago, while she tells you ‘all you need to know’ about music…”, which is quite a nice way to describe an album.
This summer, Palmer will be performing at the Sydney Festival, where she’ll be bringing her glam-punk-Grand Guignol stylings to The Spiegeltent for ten nights straight. But first, check out her pretty great recommendations…
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A book: Wetlands, by Charlotte Roche
“This is a book so totally disturbing and graphic that I recommend every woman read it just for the fascinating discomfort. Originally written in German, it’s an account of one woman’s obsession with her bodily scabs and fluids, and that’s barely scratching the surface. I love picking literal and figurative scabs, and squeezing literal and figurative pimples and gross shit like that. I loved this book, and gave it to almost every woman I knew after I read it. It was a liberator.”
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A film: Melancholia, by Lars Von Trier
“I saw it when it came out a couple years ago, while I was in Australia about to record my last record. I left the theatre with my husband, at midnight, a changed person. Something about the pace and content of the film just crawls under your skin and plants brain-lice. It’s absolutely haunting, and the atmosphere of it hasn’t left my subconscious since viewing. I recommend seeing it in the theatre over a computer screen, if possible. Big images.”
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A TV show: Breaking Bad
“Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad. I’m not a TV watcher, generally: I don’t own one, and I’ve missed most of the last 30 years of TV pop culture (I’ve never seen an episode of MASH, or Friends, or Seinfeld, or Star Trek). But my touring band were going crazy talking about Breaking Bad, so on a cross-Atlantic flight a few weeks ago, I watched the first episode of the first series. Then the second. Then the third. And seven hours later, with my brain blown, I’d watched the entire first season in one sitting, with two bathroom breaks thrown in. HOLY FUCK, IT’S GOOD.”
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An album: I Often Dream Of Trains, by Robyn Hitchcock
“I love Robyn Hitchcock. He’s one of my favorite songwriters of all time, and he’s very difficult to describe, which makes him perfect. There’s a little bit of The Beatles against a little Monty Python against a little Leonard Cohen against a little They Might be Giants. The man is just a fountain of beautiful ideas, and they spring forth from his voice and guitar (and on this 1984 album, piano) like a wave of surreal summer rain. It’s hard to pin him down in one track, since the songs are so varied and this particular collection really works as AN ALBUM, start to finish. Highly recommended as driving and listening music, as the lyrics will soothe your soul and open your eyes.”
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A song: ‘Seven Stone’, by Mali Sastri from Jaggery
“There are certain songs that get stuck in your head and this song, in 5/4 time signature, seems to have implanted it’s hook in my brain years ago and never left. It drifts in when I’m least expecting it. It’s a dark, driving piano chugger about an eating disorder, delivered by one of the top vocalists in New England, and those ingredients themselves should pique your curiosity. Primal scream therapy using a keyboard is never a bad thing.”
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A comic: Dirty Plotte, by Julie Doucet
“I wasn’t much into comics when I was a teenager, being more into angsty music and fictional books, but this comic somehow landed in my lap through the friend of an ex-boyfriend, and I was absolutely enthralled. Julie Doucet was basically reaching into her soul, scooping out the nastiest, funniest bits, and smearing them on the pages of her comic in teeny-weeny little drawings that entertained and disturbed me in equal measure. She stopped making the comic some time ago, and started just drawing heads. I wish she’d make more.”
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A website: ‘Brainpickings’, by Maria Popova
“I’m a big fan of Maria Popova’s ‘Brainpickings‘. She’s like a modern-day Romantic librarian polyglot, connecting the dots daily between art, science, emotion, and the world news. It’s like… news for the soul. She also feeds her blog through tumblr.”
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A fashion label or brand: Dr. Bronner’s Magical All-One Castile soap
“I am a huge fan of Dr. Bronner’s Magical All-One Castile soap. I was a huge fan of it and it’s mysterious message-bearing label BEFORE I saw the documentary about the man and family behind the product, but the documentary simply nailed my commitment to the product. I use it to wash my costumes, wash my bras, wash my body, wash my hair, and brush my teeth. Back in the heyday of The Dresden Dolls, I wrote them a fan letter and told them we’d be happy to officially endorse them. They wrote back, a really nice letter, saying they were too small an operation to be endorsed by a rock band, but here is some free soap. And they sent us 20 bottles of soap. How awesome.”
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Amanda Palmer will be performing at The Spiegeltent over 10 nights from January 9-19. Find further information on the Sydney Festival website.
[feature image by Kambriel]