But I wanted to write my thoughts on Amanda Palmer's new album.
There Will Be No Intermission.
It is absolutely beautiful. It is one of the most cohesive and stunningly beautiful albums I have ever heard in my life. I would say it’s probably the most cohesive album that Amanda has ever made.
I listened to it for the first time back in October, on a long train journey, me and my headphones as I stared out on the green countryside. From the moment The Ride started, I could tell this was a beautifully arranged and thought-out album, staying true to the songs that we have heard, but adding just enough production to give them a real spark of life.
Following The Ride comes Drowning In The Sound, which made me absolutely die and almost audibly squeal. But that’s one of the few ‘joyous’ points of the album (if you can even call it that, while talking about climate change and internet hatred). But the rest of the album is almost unrelentingly dark, and it’s depressing, and we go through death, and sadness, and abortion, and yet it still manages to feel real.
At points along the path to this album’s creation, I got a bit worried that some of Amanda’s writing was becoming dark for the sake of being dark. It’s underlined and emphasised by the artwork - and, like the songs, at first, I was uncertain about a full-frontal cover. I wondered if it was shock nudity for the sake of shock nudity.
But I was wrong about all of it. Hearing the songs all here together, like this, produced in this way, they don’t feel like darkness for the sake of darkness. The cover doesn’t feel like shock nudity for the sake of shock nudity. It feels like honesty. It feels like raw emotion. It feels like somebody who has been exposed to a lot of darkness and negativity - not just in her own life, but in the entire world around her - and has been ground down, shaken to her most vulnerable, and then created this entire work about the darkness of life. Because There Will Be No Fucking Intermission in life.
Almost every song here sounds the best it has ever sounded to me. Bigger On The Inside has gone from a repetitive strained dirge (and I don’t mean that as bad as it might sound) to a swelling, atmospheric piece. Machete has added knife sounds and samples, creating a song that could almost sound jaunty and fun, if not for the underlying tension and urgency, building up every time to dissolve into the chorus.
And finally, it all culminates in Death Thing, and its gorgeous climactic resolution, and it really feels like watching a piece of opera reaching its finale. And I realise, that’s what this album is - it’s theatre. It’s opera. It’s fucking ART.
It’s not a collection of songs. It is, definitively, an album, in the very old school sense of the word. It is a start-to-finish, cohesive, linked piece of work. The interludes really help to tie the album together, and solidify it as A Piece Of Work. It’s not a collection of songs. It is an Album, in the very old-school sense of the world.
That’s partly why I’ve been a little put out by people expressing less-than-excitement, because they’ve heard (almost) all of the song on the album. Because, it’s true. You’ve heard the songs. But you haven’t heard The Album.
And, for all of the people worrying about songs being altered, my advice is to not. These songs have undergone some serious improvement, and now they finally feel like finished, beautiful songs.
But more than that, this album is, in itself, a beautiful, cohesive collection of songs. The demo versions of Machete, or Bigger On The Inside, or The Thing About Things, wouldn’t have fit on this album. There’s a beautiful consistency between all of the songs. They all belong here.
It reminds me a little of something Tori Amos said about her album “From The Choirgirl Hotel” - that all of these songs live their own lives, but this is the moment at which they’re checking into the hotel, and this is what they sound like while they’re in the hotel. So, the previously recorded versions of these songs (because to me, it doesn’t feel entirely right to retroactively label them as ‘demos’) still very much exist, just as their live renditions exist. But these are the versions of the songs that belong on the album.
So, in conclusion… This record is really fucking good. REALLY fucking good. It is important for today’s culture, and it is a beautiful no-holds-barred expression and exploration of the darker side of life, and I sincerely hope it gets recognised and rewarded for the beauty that it is.
