They quote and blend together Kurt Weill to the most egocentric rock of Patti Smith, Nick Cave e The Violent Femmes. There are two of them, Amanda Palmer (voice and piano) and Brian Viglione (guitar and drums), and hail from Boston. As their name suggests, the group's sound mixes the charm and innocence that the vision of a doll can express, with the bloodthirsty sonic assault symptomatic of madness, like the bombing of the city of Dresden in 1945. They are arguably the group capable of bringing a breath of fresh air to American rock.
The self-titled debut album, to be released in Italy on 21 February, was produced by Martin Bisi (Swans and Sonic Youth). After opening for Beck, B-52's e Jane's AddictionThe Dresden Dolls have just finished a sold-out US tour. Europe now awaits them. Amanda Palmer previously worked in an avant-garde theatre in Germany and is clearly excited to return to the continent that has given the group so much influence. 'I think Europe and the Dresden Dolls are made for each other,' she says.
To understand the musical concept of the Dresden Dolls, we must first step back in time and return to post-World War I Germany. At that time there lived a man called Bertolt Brecht, Marxist doc, creator of the so-called 'Epic Theatre'. In his plays, always imbued with social meaning, Brecht conceived theatre as a true expression of reality, thus preventing the spectator from identifying with the character on stage only for the duration of the play itself, and focusing his attention on how similar that character could be to the spectator and his private life. To encourage the audience to maintain a more critical distance to what was happening on stage, Brecht introduced his 'Alienation Effect', i.e. the use of anti-illusion techniques to remind the audience that they were in a theatre watching a real enactment of reality. In his own words: "We need a kind of theatre that not only releases feelings and impulses within a particular historical period of human relations in which the drama unfolds, but also develops and encourages those thoughts that can help transform the period itself." Together with his friend song-writer Kurt Weill, Brecht composed the famous 'Three Money Opera', which also became famous thanks to the song 'Mac The Knife'. The Dresden Dolls, whose genre ironically reinterprets Brecht's illusion by abolishing staging techniques, have toured stages across America distributing their emotional-theatre remedy to a country locked in doubt, fear and deep loneliness.
These are the dates :
FRIDAY 25 FEBRUARY - RONCADE (TV) - NEW AGE
SATURDAY 26 FEBRUARY - MILAN - TRANSYLVANIA LIVE
Information : 02.76113055
Official website :
www.dresdendolls.com
