You Got Me Singing: Amanda Palmer Releases a New Album… With Her Dad!
Amanda Palmer, the reigning queen of the dark cabaret movement, has just about done it all. She’s achieved cult fame as one half of the vaudevillian duo Dresden Dolls and has a successful solo singing career under her own name. She is a performance artist and an occasional troublemaker. She’s a published author and married fellow writer Neil Gaiman in 2011. She runs a fascinating personal blog, has become an expert in the growing trend of direct-to-fan marketing, and last year she became a mother. What could possibly be next on Amanda Palmer’s list? Well, releasing an album recorded with her once-estranged father during her pregnancy, of course!
Jack and Amanda Palmer’s You Got Me Singing is a deeply personal project for both Palmers, and, according to Amanda, it has been a long time coming. Father and daughter have remarked on the fact that part of the reason for this album was to spend time with one another. Amanda has openly spoken about her parent’s long-ago divorce and her father’s subsequent move across country. For many years, Amanda and Jack’s relationship was a distant one before it began to mend, thanks to time and a shared love of music.
You Got Me Singing is a 12-song cover album on which Amanda and Jack share both vocal and instrumental responsibilities. Amanda’s piano, Jack’s guitar, a ukulele here and a glockenspiel there create simple but rich tributes to artists from Melanie Safka to Phil Ochs. The title track is a Leonard Cohen original and is the perfect opener for this album. After all, according to the elder Palmer, it was music that brought this father and daughter back together after Amanda “got him singing” by occasionally inviting him onstage during her shows. Jack Palmer’s raw, deep voice, evocative of Johnny Cash at times, pairs well with Cohen’s calm and nostalgic “You Got Me Singing.”
There’s a familial feeling that permeates the album. Amanda Palmer has never sounded as gentle and peaceful as she does on tracks such as Lucy and Carly Simon’s “Wynken, Blynken and Nod,” which could pass for a lullaby, and Kimya Dawson’s “All I Could Do.” Though Dawson’s lyrics discuss concern over the effect that becoming a mother could have on a musical career, You Got Me Singing proves that motherhood agrees with Amanda Palmer in that department.
Maternity and a strengthened bond between father and daughter have a clear influence on the theme of this album. That being said, it also seems that the Palmers had the current sociopolitical landscape of America in mind when making song choices. Their mournful rendition of Sinead O’Connor’s “Black Boys on Mopeds” is a haunting reminder of the need for such a protest song both when O’Connor released it in 1990 and still to this day. Jack Palmer’s stoic, matter-of-fact voice on Phil Och’s “In the Heat of the Summer” further reinforces that painful realization. Perhaps a certain irony can be found in the inclusion of songs that highlight an inability to unite and progress on an album that was born out of healing.
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Jack and Amanda Palmer have done something special on You Got Me Singing. They have bared their souls by sharing with us the development of a sacred relationship. Through these 12 deliberately chosen songs, we are shown what is not only personally relevant but also important to each of them. Listening to You Got Me Singing is like watching a home movie at times. It isn’t your life, yet you feel the nostalgia.
You Got Me Singing can be streamed for free in its entirety here. It can also be purchased for just $1 on Bandcamp. But, if you like to keep it old school like me and prefer the “real thing,” pick up a vinyl (or CD) here.
Jack and Amanda Palmer are currently touring the east coast area in support of their album. Click here for tickets!
Amanda and Jack Palmer
July 18 – First Parish Church, Lexington, MA
July 19 – Le Poisson Rouge, NY
July 20 – Le Poisson Rouge, NY
July 23 – Basilica Hudson, Hudson, NY
Amanda Palmer
July 29 – Royal Albert Hall, London
The Dresden Dolls
August 26 – Blue Hills Band Pavilion, Boston, MA
August 27 – Coney Island Boardwalk, Brooklyn, NY
