Amanda Palmer is a singer, writer, pianist, activist and blogger who simultaneously embraces and explodes traditional frameworks of music, theatre, community and art. She first came to prominence as one half of the Boston-based punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls, earning global applause for their wide-ranging theatricality and inventive songcraft. Her solo career has proven equally brave and boundless, including such groundbreaking works as the fan-funded THEATRE IS EVIL, which made a top 10 debut on the SoundScan/Billboard 200 upon its 2012 release and remains the top-funded music project on Kickstarter. In 2013 she presented The Art of Asking at the annual TED conference, which has since been viewed over 10 million times worldwide. The following year saw Palmer expand her philosophy into the New York Times bestseller, The Art of Asking: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Let People Help. The Art of Asking audiobook, which Palmer recorded herself, also topped the New York Times bestseller charts.
Amanda Palmer’s new album, There Will Be No Intermission, dropped last month via 8 Ft. Records/Cooking Vinyl. Her first solo album in more than six years, There Will Be No Intermission is Palmer’s third solo LP, and it’s the multi-faceted artist’s most powerful and personal collection to date, with songs that tackle the big questions: life, death, grief and how we make sense with it all. While the themes may be dark, the album’s overall sonic and lyrical mood is one of triumph in the face of life’s most ineffably shitty circumstances. Recorded over a single month in Los Angeles by John Congleton (who previously engineered and produced 2012’s acclaimed Theatre Is Evil), There Will Be No Intermission was entirely crowd-funded, this time by over 14,000 patrons using Palmer’s community hub on Patreon. There Will Be No Intermission could be heard last week in its entirety via NPR’s First Listen, and is now available in stores and on all DSPs.
“The last seven years have been a relentless parade of grief, joy, birth and death, and all of it has galvanized me to the core: as a writer, as a woman, as an artistic servant,” says Palmer. “I also had no idea that my 14,000 patrons – who held my hand through this entire process – would have the profound effect on my songwriting that they did. Everything feels inseparable now: my crowdfunding through patreon, the birth of our son, the election of Trump, two abortions, the Kavanuagh hearing, the death of my best friend, being in Ireland for the repeal, the miscarriage I had on Christmas day. I sat in a theater in London and watched Hannah Gadsby decimate the blurted lines between entertainment and naked truth, I saw the brave women of #MeToo standing up against their rapists, and I saw Nick Cave in concert and on record working through his grief using art as a necessary and generous tourniquet that others could re-use. They all reminded me to try harder and harder still to tell the real, unadorned truth. I’ve seen how infectious the darkest truths are, when spoken without shame, and I felt like taking any other path would have been a cop-out.”
We have a pair of tickets to give away to see Amanda Palmer at Temple Performing Arts Center tomorrow night at 7:30 pm. To qualify to win, all you have to do is sign up for our mailing list (see right, below the masthead). Trust us, this is something you want to do. In addition to breaking news alerts and Phawker updates, you also get advanced warning about groovy concert ticket giveaways and other free swag opportunities like this one! After signing up, send us an email at PHAWKER66@GMAIL.COM telling us a much (or that you are so cool, you’ve long been on our mailing list), with the words THERE WILL BE NO INTERMISSION in the subject line, and the correct answer to this ridiculously easy Amanda Palmer trivia question: What does AFP stand for? Include your full name as it appears on your photo ID along with a mobile number for confirmation (FYI, none of this info will be shared or even stored). Good luck and godspeed!