Photo Credit Kahn and Selesnick
“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” – Amanda Palmer, 2019
“Dense and intense, the new record from cult hero Amanda Palmer is loaded with the drama of real life.” – NME ****
“This is not so much pop music, as music that might make your ears pop” – Daily Telegraph ****
“A reminder of why she’s adored by many.” – Q ****
“Its sonic scope is vast and all-encompassing while the subject matter is both candid and intimate in nature.” – Louder Than War, 9/10
“A brave record.” – Metro
“A crucial, brutal, honest album” – The Line of Best Fit, 9/10
“Unapologetically frank and revealing.” – Billboard
“Give her the time; pay close attention; it’s worth the ride…There Will Be No Intermission is a triumphant return of an uncompromising artist. It is singularly the best piece of work that Palmer has produced in her career.” – PopMatters
“On almost every song there’s a line so striking it almost punches you in the gut.” – MusicOMH
“Amanda Palmer is the clearest voice of reason we have as states unnecessarily crack down on abortion.” – The Washington Post
“Palmer’s sharply opinionated songs, performed alone at the keys, will ring loud and clear.” – The New York Times
“Amanda Palmer is so f**king captivating, I felt it impossible to pull myself away. I was being drawn into the rocks with her enchanting charisma and hilariously sarcastic storytelling abilities. I cannot suggest strongly enough that you go out and see her live.” – Pancakes & Whiskey
Amanda Palmer has announced an extensive new autumn 2019 UK & Irish tour in support of her latest highly-acclaimed third solo album There Will Be No Intermission.
There Will Be No Intermission (plus its attendant North American live shows) has already seen the multi-faceted artist receive some of the best reviews in a career pretty much awash with incredible reviews. Her first solo album in more than six years, There Will Be No Intermission is her most powerful and personal collection to date, with songs that tackle the big questions: life, death, grief and how we make sense with it all. While the themes may be dark, the album’s overall sonic and lyrical mood is one of triumph in the face of life’s most ineffably shitty circumstances.
“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.”
Amanda’s hugely anticipated worldwide tour, set to circle theatres around the globe in the next twelve months, kicks off in The Netherlands in September 2019 and travels through mainland Europe before heading to the UK & Ireland for fifteen dates, culminating in four nights at London’s intimate Union Chapel. The touring show itself will feature Palmer on solo piano and ukulele, with no band accompaniment; a night of graphic, honest and funny storytelling and songs that Palmer claims will form her “most human and vulnerable stage-show to date.”
Tickets for the following 2019 UK & Irish live dates are on-sale now via nointermission.amandapalmer.net and usual agents;
16 October Bexhill-On-Sea De LA Warr Pavilion
19 October Cardiff St David’s Hall
20 October Cambridge Corn Exchange
23 October Cork Opera House
24 October Dublin National Concert Hall
26 October Belfast Ulster Hall
27 October Limerick University Concert Hall
1 November Dunfermline Carnegie Hall
2 November Glasgow City Halls
3 November Manchester Albert Hall
4 November York Opera House
7 November Newcastle Tyne Theatre
5 December London Union Chapel
6 December London Union Chapel
13 December London Union Chapel
14 December London Union Chapel
Recorded over a single month in Los Angeles by John Congleton (who previously engineered & produced 2012’s acclaimed Theatre Is Evil), the latest album There Will Be No Intermission was entirely crowd-funded, this time by over 14,000 patrons using Palmer’s community hub on Patreon. Palmer’s often-overlooked skills as a pianist mark the LP with a stark but grand sonic approach utterly distinct from her two prior solo albums. Indeed, the album’s 10 songs feature only a few extra overdubs provided by key associates, including Congleton, Palmer’s friend and frequent collaborator Jason Webley, Montreal-based programmer/keyboardist Max Henry and veteran drummer Joey Waronker. Longtime collaborator Jherek Bischoff also added touches of prepared piano and upright bass; he also arranged ten short orchestral instrumentals based on the motifs of the songs, creating an intermission of sorts between each track.
Sombre yet exultant, There Will Be No Intermission presents still more dimensions to Amanda Palmer’s already voluminous talent, once again confirming her as a master songwriter at the height of considerable power. This one-of-a-kind artist has miraculously moulded humour, tears, confession, and naked personal pain into a matchless piece of work that could very well have been morose and gloomy, but is instead deeply relatable, healing and inspirational.
Beginning with the epic Bill-Hicks-inspired “The Ride”, There Will Be No Intermission sees Palmer revealing her heart in total, turning the coals of fraught experience into musical diamonds. Palmer wrote “The Ride” with the help of her patrons, puzzle-piecing their personal comments about fear and grief into a sonic emotional snapshot of her community. Themes of death and reproduction recur throughout, including “A Mother’s Confession,” a funny, honest, slice-of-life ramble detailing Palmer’s failings as a new mother, and “Machete”, written in tribute to her best friend, Anthony (for whom her son was named), following his untimely passing from cancer. “Voicemail for Jill” chronicles a different sort of death as Palmer reaches out to a friend on her way to an abortion clinic.
“I’ve been trying to write a good abortion song for twenty-five years,” she says. “It’s been the white whale of my songwriting. Having had three abortions for very different reasons, and after connecting with hundreds of women who’ve gone through the same isolating and lonely experience, I just wanted to do the topic poetic justice. How do you write a song about abortion without being too heavy-handed or too preachy? It was only after being in Dublin for the abortion referendum that I came home and glued myself to the piano bench and said: ‘Amanda, write it. You’re a good enough songwriter now, you’ll find a way.’ Playing it live has felt like a hymn to every man and woman in the audience who’s never been able to talk openly about their own abortion experiences.”
Watch the video for “Voicemail For Jill” here
Another key track, “Drowning in the Sound” – also written using crowd-sourced comments from Palmer’s blog – explores hidden connections between political unrest, the impending uncertainty of Hurricane Harvey (many of her fans had evacuated their homes the day before the song was written), climate change, the solar eclipse, internet-hate and, bizarrely, Taylor Swift. One of the more lavishly produced songs on the album, the song combines Palmer’s singular style of piano-taming with a restrained chorus that pays sonic homage to two diverse but connected mentors: Prince and Ani DiFranco.
Listen to “Drowning In The Sound” here
In addition to the new record, Palmer has partnered with the collaborative art-team Kahn & Selesnick (along with LA-based photographer Allan Amato and Iceland-based Artist Stephanie Zakas) to create a companion volume with over sixty theatrical photographic portraits taken mostly in and around the upstate New York home Palmer shares with her husband, writer Neil Gaiman. The portfolio – also titled There Will Be No Intermission – is available now via her website and will also be sold on the forthcoming world tour,
