Amanda Palmer returns to NZ with a story to tell at Q Theatre, Auckland

Amanda Palmer at Q Theatre.

She was only meant to be here for 10 days. In March 2020, American punk/cabaret musician Amanda Palmer said goodbye to her husband and 4-year-old son, and hopped on a flight to New Zealand for the last stop of a year-long global tour. One week later, New Zealand was in lockdown, and it would be more than two years before Palmer made her way back home to Woodstock, New York.

Known for playing interesting lesser-known venues (her last New Zealand tour saw her take her ukelele and grand piano to Auckland CBD’s neo-gothic St Matthew’s cathedral and a four-stop “small hall crawl” on Waiheke), Palmer has returned to our little corner of the world to tour a new show, Amanda Palmer Comes Down For a Quick Catch-Up, for just three shows at Queenstown’s boutique Sherwood Lodge, Wellington’s historic Old St Paul’s and Q Theatre in Auckland’s tiny unofficial theatre district on Queen St.

Amanda Palmer spoke at length about her time in New Zealand.

Last night at Q Theatre, Palmer told the story of her time here in a sold-out show that was as much lounge act and confessional as gig, where there was as much storytelling as music. Between songs, Palmer thanked the audience - many of whom were clearly friends - for the kindness she and her son were shown during the pandemic. In a show that ran over by an hour (and was sprinkled with promises that the Waiheke dwellers would not miss the last ferry home), she told the story of how life unravelled in two-and-a-half years stuck in New Zealand.

During her time in Aotearoa, Palmer’s marriage of 12 years to author Neil Gaiman ended, and she found herself locked down and living in an Airbnb in Havelock North, solo parenting their son, navigating a new culture and community, and feeling desperately cut off from the world. Usually a prolific artist, she composed just four songs in New Zealand - songs she says were written just to keep her sane in a crazy time.

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The result is Palmer’s recent release, the five-track New Zealand Survival Songs, written and recorded here. Funded by 10,000 patrons on Patreon, the EP tells her New Zealand story - there are songs about the myth of Te Mata Peak and the greedy giant who died chomping his way through it (The Man Who Ate Too Much), nights spent doom-scrolling the New York Times at the height of the pandemic (Ballad of the New York Times), and a gentle complicated love song to the Land of the Long White Cloud featuring Julia Deans of Fur Patrol (Little Island).

Ever an open book, Palmer talked at length during the Q Theatre show about the end of her relationship with Gaiman, and many songs spoke directly to the disorientating and heartbreaking experience of finding herself single and solo parenting at the bottom of the earth during a global crisis.

In the mix were new and old songs from Palmer’s recently reformed punk cabaret act The Dresden Dolls and she was joined on stage by guests Deans, songwriter Aura Torkington and former NZ poet laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh.

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Known fondly to fans as Amanda “F***ing” Palmer, Palmer is famous for being a force of creativity, openness and charisma. Her power to inspire emotion and adoration from her crowd was evident in a show that felt personal, connecting and cathartic. The pandemic made New Zealand an intrinsic part of her life story and with her announcement that she and her son had recently been granted permanent residency in New Zealand, you can trust that she will be back.

Amanda Palmer plays Wellington on January 27, Sydney on February 1 and Melbourne on February 3