Catching Up With... the Dresden Dolls

A Dresden Dolls performance is a unique experience for any concert goer used to the choreographed, light show spectacle that is an arena rock tour. Duo Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione’s cabaret-inspired costumes, white pancake make-up and punk-rock inspired Vaudevillian tunes are more reminiscent of the blood-spattered Broadway musical Sweeney Todd than a rock concert. But the Dolls are of that rare breed of bands whose theatricality is actually backed up by solid musicianship and innovative music (we’re calling you out, Fall Out Boy!)

After a year-long hiatus, during which Palmer cut a solo album and Viglione guested with Nine Inch Nails, the Dresden Dolls are back on tour in support of their latest album No, Virginia. Viglione chatted with Paste last month about the album, touring, working with Trent Reznor and the hiatus that may have saved the Dresden Dolls.

Paste: The Dresden Dolls’ new album No, Virginia comes out tomorrow. The record is a collection of unreleased tracks, demos and B-sides from over the past five years. Why did these songs never make it onto your past albums, and why did you decide to release them now?
Viglione: Well, there’s a two part answer. For the first record, there were some songs that back then, as a new band really having only been playing together for a year, I don’t think we really performed the songs up to par. They maybe fell by the wayside in terms of priority when we were making the first album, which for a large part was guided by which songs meant the most to Amanda emotionally. And those songs were “Half Jack” and “Slide” and so forth, and “Bad Habit,” and a lot of songs that had been very near and dear to her over the years. And then with Yes, Virginia we recorded a total of 17 songs, but didn’t want to release a double album or a 17-song CD. We picked the songs we felt worked best as a collection and had kind of a theme to them, and Amanda was fairly adamant about having songs like “Me & the Minibar” and “First Orgasm” and so forth because she felt she wanted to represent the kind of slower, more intimate side of her song writing. Those songs were picked to be on Yes, Virginia and then we said, ‘Okay. We still like all of these other songs. We’ll just wait until we find the right form for them to come out.’ The scheduling worked out this year that we realized that we would still be on this kind of partial hiatus and that this would be a good chance to clean the cache of songs in our repertoire, but not feel like ‘The pressure’s on! This has got to be our next record.’ So we were kind of able to gather this material and give it a good home.

Paste: The titles of both of those albums, I thought, were so interesting. Is it true that they were inspired by The New York Sun’s famous 1897 editorial which answered a little girl’s query concerning the existence of Santa Claus? Was it kind of a play on that to call the new album No, Virginia?
Viglione: Absolutely. [The letter] is kind of this unending message of optimism, hope and belief, and to counter that with No, Virginia was, like, hysterically funny.

Paste: The album cover is a little bit creepy, but I like it.
Viglione: (Laughs.) That, again, is classic Dresden Dolls black humor for you there. The Santa Claus gnome keeled over on its back with No, Virginia as the title.

Paste: Do you personally have any favorite songs on the album – any that you were just waiting to release and you finally got to see it happen?
Viglione: “Lonesome Organist Rapes Page Turner” is one that I’m really happy about. I think it’s a fantastic song – musically and lyrically. I really like “Night Reconnaissance” a great deal. “Dear Jenny” is one from way back. That one and “The Gardener” were both originally written and performed back in 2001 for the band’s first concerts. But again, I guess we never really took the time to arrange and make official recordings of them because there’s only like 35 or 40 songs over the course of the three years that we made those albums, and you just kind of pick the ones that you’re feeling closest to at the moment. But again – they’re great songs. And “The Gardener” is a wonderful song to play live. Amanda gets to walk through the crowd, and I get to play drums and guitar kind of simultaneously. Onstage it’s just very fun. A lot of these songs are just a fun way to break up the set.

Paste: You mentioned earlier that the Dolls were taking a hiatus, and that you and Amanda were working on some solo projects. Did you put this album together and while you were working on those independent projects?
Viglione: This record basically came together as an idea over this past winter – this past December. In January, we thought to ourselves, ‘Oh, cool. We’re going to take basically most of 2008 off. This is a good opportunity to get some new music out and the rest of these songs that we want to release, and it just seemed like it would be a simple, no-brainer way to keep contact with the fans and get some new music out. And then, when we got all of the material together, we all looked at each other and went ‘Damn! This is a pretty good record.’ The songs work really well together. It doesn’t just sound like throw-away songs. We were really proud of it, so we were like ‘Shoot – let’s book a few dates around it, and do a little touring while we still can.’ And here we are now, just beginning our tour of the West Coast and Southwest, which is great. And then we’ll be doing some festival stuff in Europe. We have about four dates in Europe, and the Rothbury Festival up in Wisconsin this summer.

Paste: Are you pretty excited to be playing together again after taking some time to tour on your own and to do other things?