February 12-18, 2004

musicpicks

The Dresden Dolls

Rock/pop

Scowls aside, Goth kids always look like they're having the best time. For one thing, they've got the nicest clothes; for another, a disproportionately high number of Goth girls have babies. Maybe in that regard my high school was an anomaly, but all those velvet high-waisted maternity dresses proved that beneath their cobwebbed stockings, those Bauhaus-loving babes were enjoying pleasures unknown to, say, those whose descent into misery began and ended with the Smiths. Such pleasures are child's play to Boston's the Dresden Dolls. The duo's self-titled album, on their own 8 Foot Records, crawls with perverts, sadistic jailbait and self-mutilators. It's also wickedly funny. Whether wishing for a synthetic love slave in "Coin-Operated Boy" or contemplating the DNA damage wrought by her unknown father in "Half Jack," drama queen Amanda Palmer injects her doomy cabaret songs with biting asides and maniacal laughter. "I am not so serious/ This passion is a plagiarism," she sings in the botched-makeover romp, "Girl Anachronism." The Weill-worshipping pianist and drummer Brian Viglione look deadly serious in their black togs and white-painted scowls, but they sure sound like they're having the best time.

Fri., Feb. 13, 9:30 p.m., $5, with Marc Spitz, Erik Bader and DJ Bethany Klein, Doc Watson’s, 216 S. 11th St., www.plainparade.org.

—M.J. Fine

-- Respond to this article in our Forums -- click to jump there