The Dresden Dolls - No, Virginia
(Roadrunner)
http://www.dresdendolls.com

The flip-side, as it were, to their last album, Yes, Virginia, this cleverly titled collection is a trapdoor that opens into a dusty cellar of stripped floorboards and childhood relics, forgotten remnants of a dark past finally seeing sunlight for (more or less) the first time. Written during the recording sessions of Yes, Virginia, these songs weren’t included on that album because apparently they didn’t quite fit. Yet this is more coherent than the usual odds and sods collection – the band’s twisted, Edward Gorey-esque cabaret songs flowing from one to the next, almost as if this was the actual album, not just its cast offs.
Dear Jenny and Night Reconnaissance begin the album with a bouncy jazzy quirkiness, bounding through the duo’s distorted world with a ballerina’s grace and a murderous smile. The mood quickly dampens with the sombre The Mouse And The Model, which sounds, at its start, like a haunted music box, while the charmingly titled Lonesome Organist Rapes Page-Turner is an urgent, breathless, sexually charged (and occasionally humorous) journey through a degenerate mind. Their cover of The Psychedelic Furs’ Pretty In Pink is not as extreme as it perhaps could have been, but is a nice touch nonetheless. Definitely a band you have to be in the mood for listening to, but this glimpse into The Dresden Dolls’ secret space is both challenging and rewarding.

Mischa Pearlman