When last we met our favorite Brechtian Punk Cabaret duo, Amanda Palmer (vocals/piano) and Brian Viglione (drums) of the Dresden Dolls, they were beating a cadence distinctly their own on their self-titled debut album. From the twisted carnival clamor of “Coin-Operated Boy” to the soul-ripping shrieks of “Half Jack” Dresden Dolls’ pounding, dark melodies mesmerized.  Their emotionally musical plunge continues on the new album, Yes, Virginia, but this time Dresden Dolls’ Palmer admits they found freedom in less complicated song structures.  Palmer talks to Starpolish managing editor Tina Whelski.

STARPOLISH: How is Yes, Virginia different than your debut, Dresden Dolls?  

AMANDA PALMER: From a songwriting perspective I see a lot of similarities, but also a lot of growth.  I think one of the great things about the album is I allowed myself to simplify in a lot of ways. 

STARPOLISH: Several songs were written years ago at the time of the first record.

PALMER: I tend not to write on the road because I’m in a completely different frame of mind, so Brian and I have been continually arranging songs I wrote before I met him.  A lot of these songs pre-date then. 

STARPOLISH: When you pull these out and start performing them, do they take on a new sense from when first wrote them?

PALMER: I would say a little bit.  There’s definitely a very particular flavor to things.  But it’s also one of those beautiful coincidences.  Brian understands the music so well and clicks with my songwriting so intuitively that it’s as if the part was finished in my head and I just needed someone as in touch as Brian to play it. 

STARPOLISH: What is the significance of the album title, Yes Virginia?

PALMER: I think I like it because it’s simple contrast and I’m a contrast junkie.  I like the fact that it’s simultaneously very open-ended and hopeful, but it also has this sort of ominous overtone which is pretty typical of all the songs and the band in general.

STARPOLISH: Is “Sing” newly written or old?

PALMER: Actually that is a new song.  That was written last summer.  That song is very simple and I think it’s very beautiful.  I got it directly from a conversation I saw between a bunch of our fans on the Internet talking about how justifiable is it to sing at a rock show. People pay money for a ticket and want to go see the band, but people have also been waiting for months and months to sing the songs they know and love.  There’s this beautiful conflict of interests. At the same time, Brian was playing me all these Iron Maiden recordings.  I was listening to how engaged the crowd was and how that’s fallen out of fashion in a lot of genres.  I thought, why not deliberately write a song with a sing-a-long part that’s about that very phenomenon—about the fact that people don’t participate as much anymore because they feel so self-conscious.

STARPOLISH: You’ve always been very song-oriented. Can you talk more about your lyrics?

PALMER: Some of them are a little more opaque than others.  I look at the first album as kind of the classic breakup record.

STARPOLISH: I was going to ask about that.  It seems this girl first disillusioned with romance is now turning that on the world?

PALMER: I think that’s very true.  I think some of that is coincidental because some of the songs that fit into that theme pre-date the songs on the first record.  The collection seems as if it is turned outwards instead of inwards and it’s a little less self-absorbed, which doesn’t necessarily make it better or worse.  When I look at it I realize it’s obviously a product of the fact that I haven’t been in a significant relationship for the past few years and you can see that my attention turns elsewhere.

“Mrs O” is one of my favorite songs on the record.  That’s actually the song from which the title of our album was taken.  Once again, I just love the contrast in that song.  There’s just a profound openness to how it can be interpreted and it does what some of my favorite songs by other writers do, which is it gives you a very specific feeling.  It doesn’t point at any particular meaning or answer or question.  It just throws out images and lets them sit there and I always imagine them making a particular kind of sense to each individual listener.  I think they’re some of the most beautiful—the ones that are in-direct, but still very profound.  That’s one of the songs that I just love to go back and listen to.  It sounds like someone else could have written it.

“Delilah” is actually another example of a song I think a few years ago I wouldn’t have allowed myself to write because it was just too simple.  I used to just have this need to over-complicate everything.  If I got an idea for a three-chord song I would say that’s great that I have that idea, but it would go straight into the trash.

STARPOLISH:  Is that change because of maturity or just taste?

PALMER: I think it’s a lot of things.  I think when you’re a younger songwriter you really need to go out there and prove something.  You need to prove that you’re different and musical.  There’s a real fear of simplicity.  But when I listen to some of my favorite songwriters I hear that simplicity all over the place, whether it’s their early or late work. You hear that the most beautiful, emotional songs are just these really simple three-chord jobs with simple sentiments worded in a way that had never been captured before.  “Delilah” marks an accomplishment for me, just that I allowed myself to write a song like that.  It was just three chords and simple and about a simple subject without having to create billions of double entendres and chord changes.

Learn more about Dresden Dolls at www.dresdendolls.com.

Tina Whelski is Managing Editor of Starpolish.com.  She is also Editor of Womanrock.com www.womanrock.com , a columnist and feature writer for The Aquarian Weekly/East Coast Rocker www.theaquarian.com, and contributes to Music Connection www.musicconnection.com. Additionally she has written for The Hollywood Reporter, Modern Drummer and consults for Fearless Music TV www.fearlessmusic.com