Amanda Palmer has always made a point of standing out. With an eye for the theatrical and an open-book honesty that’s seen her songwriting tackle everything from sex changes to abortions, Palmer has never been the type to hold back. She may have started back in 2000 as part of cabaret-punk duo The Dresden Dolls, but going solo hasn’t changed anything, as demonstrated on her new album, “There Will Be No Intermission.” It is her third solo record and her first since 2012.
A sparse piano-driven album that’s broken up with orchestral interludes, “There Will Be No Intermission” displays both Palmer’s veteran experience and her willingness to adapt.
“In a certain sense, it’s the simplest album I’ve ever written,” she says. “Musically, it’s a lot less complicated than a lot of the songs I wrote in my 20s – (songs) that had a lot of odd time signatures and lots of vocal acrobatics. The songs on this record, by contrast, are often quite basic, three-chord songs. At the same time, though, I didn’t have the aptitude to write songs like this when I was in my 20s. I feel like I could have only made this kind of record at this exact time. I’ve used my accumulated wisdom –about song-writing, art, people, the world – and galvanized my experiences in order to share them with my audience.”
The album artwork is typically provocative: it features Palmer standing naked atop a wooden pole and wielding a sword as the sun sets behind her. Things pick up a notch on the cover of the album’s accompanying book of photography, lyrics and essays. Here, Palmer is naked (again), but this time she is lying on the floor surrounded by random objects, including Bill Cosby’s memoir and a plush Elmo doll.
“It’s a collection of objects that were sent to me by my patrons to be burned,” explains Palmer. She is referring to the donors on membership platform Patreon, where fans pay an artist directly for exclusive experiences and content. Palmer is a public advocate of using crowdfunding for the arts; since she launched her Patreon in 2015, Palmer has made upwards of $1.58 million, according to data her team provided to Billboard. The burning project was just one of many projects available to supporters.
“There was always going to be the darkly funny stuff – like that Bill Cosby book – but some of it was really heavy,” she admits. “I got sent wedding rings, family photographs ... even legal documents. This whole album, and everything that goes along with it, is really about letting go. It’s about having the conversations you don’t want to have.”
Palmer’s work in and out of music is often met with divisive discussion and lengthy criticism. Controversy has followed her for more or less as long as she has been in the public eye. The decision to put herself out there – quite explicitly – on both covers could be read as an embracing of that controversy.
“People may find it hard to believe,” she muses, “but every time I’ve been accused of provoking people it’s almost always an accident.
“I think the greatest misconception people have about me is that I want to upset people,” Palmer continues. “I never do. I hate upsetting people. I’m not a mean person. I’m not spiteful. My personality has always been that of a people-pleaser – I desperately want to make people happy. The idea that people would ever think the opposite about me is so distressing to me.”
Earlier in the year, Palmer took this people-pleasing to an extreme by taking part in an episode of “Conversations With People Who Hate Me” – an American podcast hosted by Dylan Marron, who moderates interactions between the hated and their hater.
In Palmer’s case, Marron facilitated a Skype conversation between Palmer and someone who had attacked her on Twitter. The resulting conversation is a fascinating listen. Over 45 minutes, the tweeter asks about particular instances in Palmer’s work that have made them uncomfortable, and Palmer responds as openly and candidly as possible. “That was a really powerful experience,” says Palmer. “It felt like a drop of medicine in a sea of hatred.”
Palmer says that she wishes she could more often speak directly to those who have criticized her or even demonized her work. “It’s so easy to criticise someone when you don’t have to do it directly and you don’t think there’s any accountability,” she says. “I have a feeling that if I had a face-to-face conversation with 99 per cent of the people who have disagreed with me or criticized my work, it would genuinely be a very constructive and productive thing.”
Palmer hopes that those who listen to There Will Be No Intermission will see a different side of her – one that’s vulnerable, truthful and reflective in nature. It’s a far cry from her days in The Dresden Dolls, but she figures that it has to be.
“Every artist is a human being that has gone through their own bizarre evolution,” she says. “The most important thing about being an artist is that you don’t spend a lot of your time rehashing the past. Your energy is best spent thinking about what you’ve learned and making something new from it.”
Courtesy of The Big Issue Australia / INSP.ngo