Amanda Palmer: alive and experimental

Of all the ways to interview Amanda Palmer by phone, calling her while she's on a train -- rolling north toward home in Boston on a chilly and gray November day, no less -- seems most fitting of all. As leader of the cabaret-punk duo Dresden Dolls, Palmer is an underground icon of gothic glamor, belting out stentorian tales of emotional intrigue perfect for black-and-white short films.

Palmer and her Dolls partner, Brian Viglione, recently put the group on hold while Palmer made a solo album, the bewitching "Who Killed Amanda Palmer" (Roadrunner Records). The album is very much of a piece with the Dolls, with Palmer exuding a sort of Germanic beauty-queen vibe. But Palmer's stark piano balladry takes a turn toward lush pop territory, thanks to an assist from Chapel Hill alumnus Ben Folds.

Folds wrote Palmer a gushy fan letter last year and offered the use of his Nashville recording studio. When Palmer took him up on the offer for her solo album, Folds asked whether he could produce it. Palmer said yes, and she's nothing short of effusive about the experience.

"Ben had all the ingredients of a good producer," Palmer says. "He really respected my stuff, we got along famously, and we made each other laugh nonstop. He added what needed adding to every song and didn't overdo anything. I really just trusted him. When he asked to produce it, I made a blind-faith decision, having no idea what would happen and no sense of what he'd do. I was blown away by his arrangements and production. It was all beyond what I imagined any of it could possibly be."

Palmer is on a tour now that comes to Raleigh's Lincoln Theatre on Saturday. She'll bring in five backup performers, although the show only involves one person besides Palmer playing music (a violinist).

"The other four are these Australian actors who don't actually play anything," she says. "But they do awesome crazy theatrical [expletive] while I'm performing. It's impossible to explain; it must be seen."

Palmer's work has always involved as much theatricality as music, and there's a lot more to "Who Killed" than the 12 songs on the album. Check whokilledamandapalmer.com, a multimedia companion scrapbook, which has pictures and video clips about each song. There's also an accompanying photo book with text by English science-fiction writer Neil Gaiman.

Palmer also has a theater production in the works, and she's thinking about another book project. At some point, reconvening Dresden Dolls might enter into the equation -- Palmer reports she and Viglione are getting along better now -- or it might not.

"I try to look at my life as one big question mark to fill in," Palmer says. "What do I want to do today? Not what's going to make the most money or what's expected, but what do I want? It can be hard to answer that or plan anything six months out. The important thing to me is right now, and one thing I find I'm doing in my life is not making any choices based on anything other than who I want to be with and what I want to do.

"A lot of the songs that wound up on 'Who Killed Laura Palmer' would've been Dresden Dolls songs if the timing had been different," she continues. "So it's not like there's a strong delineation. I'm just a songwriter. As long as it comes out somehow, I'm happy. I don't mean to sound cavalier or blasé, I just think every song can have different incarnations. Sort of like you love your kid whether he's an artist or a doctor, you just want to love your kid. I try hard not to think about where a song's going to end up when I'm writing it."

"Who Killed" has plenty of mordant humor, especially "Oasis" (funnier than you'd think, for a song involving an abortion). But it's pretty bleak overall, populated by characters struggling with loneliness, depression and even death. That's most overt on "Strength Through Music," written about the 1999 Columbine High School shootings and recorded the same week as last year's massacre at Virginia Tech.

Violent undercurrents also creep into "Guitar Hero," an examination of the wildly popular video game. Palmer was moved to write it, she says, after seeing a band race offstage after a show to go play Guitar Hero on the tour bus.

"It almost made my brain explode," Palmer recalls. "There's something about the instant gratification of skipping the hard work, getting onstage in front of a screaming crowd -- even if it's just virtual -- and [playing] that presses the pleasure receptor in a way it's not been pressed before. Even this band was choosing the simplicity of fake uncomplicated screaming fans on a two-dimensional screen over actual fans outside who they could talk to.

"There's something really interesting about that," she concludes. "And I couldn't help but draw parallels between that and the next few steps. Like, what happens when you're shooting a gun on a video screen? And when you interact with real people outside who you can really shoot, where do the lines get dangerously blurry? Does it condition the psyche in a weird way? I don't have any answers, but the questions are very interesting."