Amanda Palmer at Coachella 2009.

I have liked The Dres­den Dolls from the moment I heard them. I think it was in my friend Simone’s car in the Bay Area. Dri­ving through deserted down­town Oak­land at night, I remem­ber, she played me a song that built upon a sim­ple melody on a toy piano and turned into a novel, melod­i­cally rich, clever take on lone­li­ness (“Coin Oper­ated Boy,” I dis­cov­ered). Then she played for me “Girl Anachro­nism,” a much more fran­tic, anx­ious song, and I was sold — here was a group that made basic ele­ments (mostly piano and drums) into a unique spec­ta­cle by sheer force of great song­writ­ing and force­ful per­for­mance. But I never got prop­erly into them, save for the occa­sional lis­ten in other people’s cars; I never bought any of their music, though my sis­ter did.

Then, through Neil Gaiman’s blog, I found Dres­den Dolls singer and pianist Amanda Palmer and noticed that she had new solo mate­r­ial out. I saw a video for a song called “Leeds United,” and I loved it. And then I heard she was play­ing Coachella, and I made a date with myself to see if her per­for­mance matched her record.

In a tent where the air must have been close to 100 degrees, after a bit of wait­ing, “Thus Spake Zarathrus­tra” boomed from the speak­ers. About 20 peo­ple came onstage, wear­ing next to noth­ing, their bod­ies painted in wild gray and white splashes; then they turned around to reveal Amanda Palmer’s name painted on their backs as Amanda jumped up on her piano bench, sil­ver cape-like thing aflut­ter, in a majes­tic pose. She flung it off, sat down, and began playing.

What a show. First of all, she knows how to craft a beau­ti­ful, mem­o­rable song: I knew next to none of the music, but most of it imme­di­ately lodged in my head. Onstage, she is an elec­tro­mag­net — you can­not give her any­thing but your undi­vided atten­tion because the art you’re wit­ness­ing is pow­er­ful and per­sonal and deliv­ered intensely. Her songs are lit­tle melodic poems and sto­ries, mov­ing mono­logues. I was not at all sur­prised to learn that she did the­ater when she was younger; she deliv­ers her songs with the com­plete immer­sion of an actor com­mit­ted to the role, and she has the charisma of a born per­former. She com­manded that swel­ter­ing tent for an hour, with just an elec­tric key­board and her friend Zoe Keat­ing on cello. She sings often of pain and despair and dys­func­tion, but the qual­ity of the music and the cathar­tic sat­is­fac­tion of her per­for­mance gave hope the final say.

She had a great per­sonal rap­port with her fans. She chat­ted between songs about her expe­ri­ences with British media cen­sor­ship, her obser­va­tions on young musi­cians and young sol­diers both play­ing Gui­tar Hero half a world apart, and other sto­ries behind her songs. She told one fan, “yes, you can has setlist.” Obvi­ously thrilled with how the show was turn­ing out, she got her lap­top and took a pic­ture of her­self with the audi­ence in the back­ground, Twit­tered for pos­ter­ity.

At the end of the set, she had the audi­ence carry her, in Super­man pose, to the back of the crowd on their upraised hands:

Amanda Palmer surf­ing the crowd, Coachella 2009.

There, she sat on the shoul­ders of the mem­bers of a per­for­mance troupe, pro­duced a ukelele, and led a sin­ga­long of Radiohead’s “Creep.” She had sev­eral hun­dred peo­ple singing about how they’re weirdos and they wish they were spe­cial but they don’t belong here, with smiles on their faces, together. It was a touch­ing moment: a choir of mis­fits momen­tar­ily united in vul­ner­a­bil­ity, sound­ing joy­ful to be in a group of kin­dred spir­its. Or maybe every­one was just singing along to a well-known pop song, iron­i­cally pre­sented, and the con­trast amused them. For me, both were true.

Then she led a parade to an out­door performance-art stage in the mid­dle of the grounds. She sat on the stage, amid a mob, and received fans with hugs and kisses. She took pho­tos with fans, and was gen­er­ally very gra­cious with total strangers. Later, I went to a tent where she was giv­ing auto­graphs and asked her to per­son­al­ize some presents for peo­ple. I lis­tened to one of those presents on the drive home, and I’m even more deeply struck by how thought­ful and inven­tive and per­sonal and mov­ing a lyri­cist she is, and by how well she turns inter­est­ing musi­cal ideas into songs. Plus, Neil Gaiman and she worked on a book together that comes out soon, and as a huge fan of Mr. Gaiman, I am very much look­ing for­ward to this.

Because she was so good and so per­son­able, and because I have been recov­er­ing from ter­ri­ble Coachella dust-ravaged sinuses, I’ve been perus­ing her Web sites, www.amandapalmer.net and www.whokilledamandapalmer.com. There’s a lot of fun stuff there, lots of insights into the life of a fas­ci­nat­ing artist, and a lot of thought­ful com­men­tary on music, art, humor, and lots of other top­ics. Rather than rehash it all, I’ll just rec­om­mend click­ing those links (with the oblig­a­tory warn­ing that the mate­r­ial you stum­ble upon will cer­tainly con­tain salty lan­guage and con­toversy, and the sites may pos­si­ble some­where have images that your boss might not like too much, so look at home).

I got my photo taken with Miss Palmer, and I think I look like a total fan­boy geek, but I’m actu­ally just really happy at hav­ing just lis­tened to her set. Other peo­ple love this photo, I guess. So here it is:

Me and Amanda Palmer, Coachella 2009

Sorry for rot­ten image qual­ity. I didn’t have my own cam­era with me, and hadn’t fig­ured out how to wring good pho­tos in weird light­ing from the one I did have.

I’ll write more later about the rest of Coachella, but I’m cur­rently enjoy­ing the new-discovery-obsession joy (yes, she counts, even though I knew of her before­hand), and I wanted to share.