Amanda Palmer at Music Hall Of Williamsburg NY, 11/14/09

What is it about Amanda Palmer that causes every little dose of her to leave one wanting more? Maybe it’s that, live, her raw magic is very much akin to raw sugar: a quick, immediately impacting but long-lasting spike of joyous highs and weirdly yet equally joyous lows. There aren’t many performers…musicians…hell, there aren’t many friends I’d want to see twice in a year, yet seeing Amanda Fucking Palmer at Music Hall Of Williamsburg marked the second time I’d seen her live in New York in about half a year.  For any normal touring musician, this would cause concern of saturating one’s market, particularly in a year when, for Amanda Palmer specifically, recorded output’s been low but media presence has been pretty damn ubiquitous.

Yeah, in true Amanda Fucking Palmer fashion-none of that mattered.

The Music Hall Of Williamsburg was the drunken bright-lights sin-city brother to the hushed living-room confessional vibe of Palmer’s last New York appearance, at Highline Ballroom.  Flanked by the incredible NY-based Nervous Cabaret,  this time Amanda Fucking Palmer had a Fucking band. And what a Fucking band they were, if I may say so myself. Impeccable rhythm, flawless horns, and a leader with a voice like melted fucking chocolate doused in bourbon. Perfect compliment to the broken-hearted, laced-up punkadelic AFP.

(snippet of AFP and Nervous Cabaret doing "Astronaut")

Running through intense bits from her solo Who Killed Amanda Palmer? Album (“Astronaut”, “Leeds United”, “Oasis” and my personal fave “Runs In The Family”), the most show-stopping moments (and believe me, the entire fucking show was jaw-on-the-floor spectacular cabaret theatre) came in the form of super worked-up covers, including a song by Kurt Weill, “House Of The Rising Sun” and, as an encore to beat all encores, a stunning, fucking flooring version of The Ting Ting’s “That’s Not My Name” that ran straight into Dresden Dolls classic “Coin Operated Boy”.

(AFP and Nervous Cabaret doing "House Of The Rising Sun". Blame the fucking asshole venue security for us only having live video snippets and not whole songs.)

En route to the exit, AFP, hoisted into the air by fans, performed a solo “Makin Whoopie “ on the ukulele as less a second encore than a “thank you” to the sold-out New York crowd, proving that Amanda Palmer’s an artist who gives love just as smotheringly and smolderingly as she receives.

Photo Credits Kristina Weise