Cult hero Amanda Palmer has announced a UK and Ireland tour to promote her latest album, There Will Be No Intermission.
The singer, writer, pianist, activist and blogger first came to prominence as one half of the Boston-based punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls, noted for their wide-ranging theatricality and inventive songcraft.
Since going solo she has become known for embracing and exploding traditional frameworks of music, theatre, community and art.
Her latest record, her third solo studio work, was released in March on Cooking Vinyl after a successful crowdfunding campaign via Patreon which was backed by more than 14,000 fans.
She says of the album: “I’ve never been nervous about releasing a record before, but this one is different. The rise of global fascism alongside the spreading fire of #MeToo has forged a louder megaphone for all women, and we’re all seeing that radical truth is infectious. I feel more urgency than ever to share the naked truth of my experiences.
“The kind of stories that I’m sharing on this record – abortion, miscarriage, cancer, grief, the darker sides of parenthood – have been therapeutic and frightening to write. But every time I play them for my friends and fans, the nodding heads of empathy have lit a fire under my ass to record and release them.”
The album was well-received by critics, with The Line of Best Fit’s 9/10 review calling it “a crucial, brutal, honest album” and Billboard describing it as “unapologetically frank and revealing”.
“Most of these songs were exercises in survival,” says Palmer. “This isn’t really the record that I was planning to make. But loss and death kept happening in real-time, and these songs became my therapeutic arsenal of tools for making sense of it all.”
Palmer’s worldwide tour kicks off in The Netherlands in September 2019 and travels through mainland Europe before heading to the UK & Ireland for 15 dates, culminating in three nights at London’s intimate Union Chapel.
The touring show will feature Palmer on solo piano and ukulele, with no band. It promises to be a night of graphic, honest and funny storytelling and songs that she says will form her “most human and vulnerable stage show to date”.
