Friday, February 18, 2005
The Dresden Dolls, Edinburgh The Venue, Thursday 17th February
Impressions from last night: Brian's own sweat rising off the drums as hit beat them, Amanda's feral sexual stare, shaking Brian's hand and blabbering about how amazing it all was, Amanda waving a beer bvottle at the front of the stage belting out 'Amsterdam,' and some fantastic, fantastic music
***
Support Gisli (and his "bunch of ladyboys") starts off fantastically with his own take on white Icelandic hiphop, with electronic beepery and an insane bass solo. After the first three songs however it becomes apparent that all his songs are about the same thing, use about the same chords and sound, well, about the same. "This is a song about my love life," he announces after forthcoming single, and set lowpoint 'The Day it All Went Wrong,' "it's called 'Straight to Hell.'" Ok so he's lonely. That said, album title track 'How About That?' is a cracker.
The crowd hustles towards the front as Gisli dismantles his drumset and the fairground atmosphere from the queue outside is back, complete with bass-heavy rap music, someone struggling manfull against it with a wooden whistle, glittergirl showering glitter and an odd sideshow involving a heavily bandaged wheelchair bound accordianist being wheeled around the venue by a 1930s Berlin whore, dressed like The Dolls' Amanda.
The roar is deafening as The Dresden Dolls stomp onto the stage and tear into 'Good Day,' Brian's drumming one part theatre to two parts punk, all facial expressions, cybals and deafening bangs as he beats the skins incredibly hard, Amanda pounding the keyboard with almost as much force as given to the drumming, her kohled eyes staring out of her whited up face with tremendous intensity. The depth and range of the music they produce belies their number, as they manage to convince you there are at least another 2 musicians contributing. Their set comprises of equal parts material from their debut album and songs from the import-only 'A is for Accident' live recordings, with a few new songs and two amazing covers - a piano and drums 'War Pigs' which maintains the heaviness of the original; and a lusty guitar, vocal and handclap rendition of Jaques Brel's 'Amsterdam' - thrown in. It's all over far too soon and the merchandise queue is so long the bouncers have to tell everyuone to hurry up- they're closing. More's the pity.
Oh dear, only three reviews in and already I have to give this 6/5
# posted by Sagremor the Foolish @ 2:06 PM 
