Cult rock Dolls come out to play

Dresden Dolls Brian Viglione and Amanda Palmer.

The Dresden Dolls still play dress-ups but only when they're in the mood. "Some nights you're backstage and you feel like putting the face-paint on, then you think, 'What's the point?' " says drummer Brian Viglione. "It's so hot it's only going to melt off."

Their punk-cabaret aesthetic is still important for the Boston duo but the music has enough drama without it. Fans love their abrasive style, explosive performances and their sometimes shocking lyrics.

On Sex Changes, a new song from second album, Yes, Virginia, singer-songwriter and pianist Amanda Palmer threatens - over heavy piano and forbidding drums - the need to "chop your clock off".

We'll have to wait and see what they're wearing when they play the King's Arms on Tuesday, says Viglione. "It's kind of like when you're a teenager and you define yourself by your outward appearance. I think it helped us feel that we were making more of our statement of who we were as a band."

With two acclaimed albums, loyal fanbases from France to Japan - and of course, Dresden in Germany - it's understandable the Dolls feel free to come out of cosmetic hiding.

But Viglione says he's had a hard time convincing Palmer that their new songs are good enough. "This past year has been sort of a battle between us to play a lot of the songs from Yes, Virginia in the live set.

"To be frank, I'm really disappointed. I think a lot of it is flat-out insecurity and feeling like a lot of writers do - that you put your best stuff out on your first record because you've had your whole life to write it, and then a lot of the songs that didn't make it on the first record go on the second.

"To me, both albums are equally as strong and I even think that the songwriting and the lyrics are better on the second album."

Critics don't entirely agree, complaining that Palmer's brash themes can often overwhelm the songs: addiction (My Alcoholic Friends), solo desire (First Orgasm) and the "jaded bitter joy crusher" of Backstabber.

Whether or not some of her confessions make Viglione feel that way, he doesn't say. He likes the ambiguity of her lyrics and would never dream of censoring them.

"Amanda writes from a pretty immediate emotional place - she doesn't necessarily go back and rewrite or rework all those details. It's straight from the heart and that's a very easy quality to work with.

"There's generally a great element of humour, too, that goes into the rehearsal process."

Viglione first heard Palmer in a solo performance at a Halloween party in 2000 and thought she "lacked rhythmic propulsion". Despite their different backgrounds - Viglione played punk and metal, Palmer loved Kurt Weill and cabaret - they had a similar approach to music that Viglione compares to a marriage.

Working on Yes, Virginia could have been an open marriage.

The Dolls invited fans to submit artwork through their website, choosing their favourites for the cover.

"We're spreading the idea that the band is really bigger than the two people making the music," he explains. "It's also about the audience - and the artwork is a great way to fuse the two."

Yes, Virginia is named after a child's famous letter to the editor of the New York Sun in 1897.

The reply, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus," became famous because it embodied the idea of faith.

The Dolls chose it because their music "questions how to make sense of everything", Viglione says.

"It symbolised the kind of hope the band has.

"One of the best aspects of music and art in general is that it can offer relief."

* The Dresden Dolls play the Kings Arms, Tuesday