The Dresden Dolls - Paradise 2005
  
   The Dresden Dolls are a two piece "Punk Cabaret" band consisting of a singer/pianist and a drummer. They pull off a lot of great songs, the subject matter of most songs are long the lines of other female singer/songwriter types, a bit angsty and what not, but i still manage to enjoy their music a lot.
  The DVD is mainly the band playing at the Paradise night club. The video was shot really well,  in fact it's one of the best looking concert videos i've seen. Really creative cinematography  you'll see stuff like  Brian drumming on one side of the screen, then you'll see Amanda looking at him in the upper left corner.  It's kinda hard to explain, but it's a far cry from the whole "Camera 1, Camera 2, Camera 1, Camera 3" style you get from most concert DVDs.
  The Paradise show is great, they're dead on with just about everything, sounding as good as they do on the album, the only song that suffers from being done live is "Girl Anachronism".  But the way the vocals are done on the album make it just about impossible to do perfectly. The cover is "Pierre" is one of the most enjoyable songs i've heard in years.  The "War Pigs" cover is pretty damn good, it's a straight forward cover but only done with piano and drums.  Brian Viglione is easily the most entertaining drummer I've seen, he's simply hilarious, pantomiming various lyrics of songs while playing and just doing all sorts of wacky crap.  I was pretty bummed out that they didn't do "Gravity" or " The Jeep Song" which are two of my favorites from the album. I  wish they would have done "Coin operated boy" during this set, there's a live version from some festival in the special features but it doesn't sound or look as good as the stuff from the Paradise show.
  The documentary "Life In The Day Of The Dresden Dolls" is kinda interesting, a nice bonus. The Paradise pre-show stuff had a pretty cool interview, then it went downhill as people did interpretive dance to various Dresden Dolls songs. My god, i hate interpretive dance. Between watching the festival shows and the documentaries I've come to the conclusion that all of their male fans are required to have poofy white guy afros. I always hate seeing fans of bands in DVDs, though the fans weren't as moronic as the drunk girl  in Slayer's War at the Warfield DVD  shouting "FUCK CONFORMITY!... man...".
   Anyway, this DVD is going to be $15 or less, it's a great buy if only for the concert and the music videos. Pick it up, it's not just for teenage goth girls and self-mutilators.

  4 out of 5 skulls
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