The Dresden Dolls - Yes, Virginia (Roadrunner)
5/5
By: Kevin Molloy
'Sex Changes' opens the frankly spectacular 'Yes, Virginia'. Allow us to run you through it in 20 second bursts. All starts out with a solitary, classical piano, and slightly haunting chord changes. 20 seconds in and with a guttural cry the drums commence, and that same piano riff unexpectedly delivers a kick to the nether regions and starts to rock you. Another 20 seconds gives you a sudden dropout, and the angular tones and pointed words of Amanda Palmer. To thoroughly disorientate, she suddenly starts singing about needing to chop your cock off (with a slightly psychopathic "tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock" to rhyme). After 4 minutes' worth of equally jilting bursts the song ends, and your latest musical love-affair is one quickie down the road.
The best thing is that the excitement isn't momentary. With just piano and keys the balance is ever shifting... dynamically it's like a 5 year old on a sugar and caffeine rush after a crate of colas, hopping from one foot to the other outside a locked toilet door. But it's not just a flash in the pan, garage-ethos affair. Palmer's lyrics are outstanding, and musically this stuff does much more than make you want to throw yourself into the mosh pit (something already quite impressive given the 2-instrument line-up). You are music hall. It knocks you out, impregnates you with its cabaret lovechild, strokes your hair and reassures you that it loves you (baby), even if it goes off the rails at every switch-point.
The entire album is glorious, from the head spinning verbal attacks of 'Sex Changes' and 'Backstabber', to the heartbreaking confessional of 'Me and the Minibar'. Palmer is as filthy as bum sex with a sow at Glastonbury (trust us, we couldn't even get away with quoting her, we'd just sound twisted), but it's an honest, true filthiness. 'First Orgasm of the Morning', for instance, could just be taken as a series of cringeworthy puns, but the broken-voiced 'I'm taking matters into my own hands' rings far too true to dismiss it with a dirty chuckle. And for every flippant or dirty word we hear, and for every disconcertingly strange idea Palmer tries out on us ("there's no Hitler and no holocaust, no winter and no Santa Claus"), we're reassured that "life is no cabaret", but that they're "inviting you anyway". Sometimes words can't convey how shatteringly great something is, superlatives struggle for supremacy and attention. The Dresden Dolls with 'Yes, Virginia' achieve that perfect antithesis of anti-folk, the yin-yang of punk-cabaret, a fine line drawn between bitter humour and sweet earnestness that they jump across and obliterate between every rhyme. The whole experience leaves you wanting nothing more than to play it all again, and to be fair, what could better denote a classic album.
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