The Dresden Dolls

I know we have a post on them but this is different.

I'm not a superfan of the DD and don't claim to be. I first heard their stuff a few years ago and only recently started properly listening. But we're currently doing a visual communication/graphic design unit at college and we're designing an album cover for a band. I narrowed it down to some I liked and ended up picking the Dresden Dolls.

Soooo I know a good few people on here are fans. I am currently searching the web for information but I thought I'd ask to see if you guys could help.
Basically I want to know anything you know about them as well as opinions.
What other bands would you compare them to?
What are your favourite lyrics quotes?
What do some of their songs make you think of?
What are your favourite lyrics that evoke cool/nice images?

Stuff like that. I've already read Wikipedia and whatnot but anything you can volunteer would be awesome :] It's always nice to get other people's views and stuff, especially with images and song lyrics.

Also I need to know who designed their previous album covers and am finding it hard to locate. Does anyone have the actual album that maybe they could look up for me?

I'll send rob on here hes a dresden dolls fanboy

What other bands would you compare them to? Emilie Autumn, Jack Off Jill, Porcelain and the tramps in a really weird way

What are your favourite lyrics quotes? I never met a more impossible girl- Delilah
in some states i heard you can burn for it
but ill burn that bridge when i get to it Mandy Goes To Med School


What do some of their songs make you think of? Lonesome Organist Rapes Page Turner makes me think of an older pedophile of a man hitting on a little girl that could be his neice. Girl Anachronism is like The Rocky Horror Picture Show on speed


What are your favourite lyrics that evoke cool/nice images?
But I turn him on
And he comes to life
Automatic joy - Coin Opertaed Boy It makes me laugh becuase I'm not sure if she means "turn him on" by like, putting a quarter in or turning him on in another way.

Missed me, missed me, now you've gone and done it
Hope you're happy in the county penitentiary
It serves you right for kissing little girls from Missed Me. It gives me an evil sort of happy feeling becuase it's like "Haha you twisted asshole! You shouldn't have messed with a little girl!!!"

This is the kinda post we need Gill for

hells yeh, im waiting

started sketches today. i got a book of kids book covers and illustrations and copied some cool victorian pattern stuff. and im probably going to the museum of childhood to draw some stuff.

coin operated boy is my main song because...well its got some good images in it aside from being a good song too.

also fank yoo jenna :]

WOOP!
Quite obviously a huge fan!

What other bands would you compare them to?
I don't really like comparing them to any bands..cause they tried to create something new. A mixture of sounds..punk and cabaret really.

What are your favourite lyrics quotes?

"I'm not exceptionally shy
But i've never had a man
That i could look straight in the eye
And tell my secret plans"

"So dont tell me that you're off to see the world
I know you wont get very far
Dont call me if you get another girl baby
Just call me if you get another car"

"who says we can’t touch
ourselves to keep from getting bored?
nothing else is touching that’s for sure"

"and i sat there for hours
waiting on the curb
thinking you might like a flower from a pretty girl"

"You'd rather be a bitch than be an ordinary broken heart"

"I'm not the carefullest of girls"..obviously..

"Please excuse her for the day, its just the way the medication makes her"

What do some of their songs make you think of?

Of raw emotion I guess. I love the first album for that, most of it just sounds so lonely. Jus constantly pointing out your own flaws in each and every song..I guess most of them have sort of an emo sound out of context though..

"Don't call the doctors
Cause they've seen it all before
They'll say just Let Her Crash And Burn She'll learn
The attention just encourages her"

"Hello, i love you will you tell me your name?
Hello, i'm good for nothing - will you love me just the same?"

"She's the kind of girl who looks for love in all the lonely places
The kind who comes to poker pockets stuffed with kings and aces
She's the kind of girl who only asks you over when its raining
Just to make you lie there catching water dripping from the ceiling"

What are your favourite lyrics that evoke cool/nice images?

Lots of their lyrics have very childish, fairytale like images in my head..but slightly morbid fairy tales I guess..

Theres lots of references to flying. I particulary like:

"You think I can't fly well you just watch me"

"But I might be catching so don't touch
You'll start believing you're immune to gravity and stuff"

"And i'm so high not even you and all your love could bring me down"

And a cute Alice and wonderland style thing could be made out of
"the time has come
to speak of many things
of jacks and queens and kings"

And I love Glass Slipper and it's harsh reality of the Cinderella story

"its a gory sort of story thats been told a hundred times before
it gets tricky dont be picky if the slipper fits you wear it whore"

"i'm not asking to go dancing i'm not that dumb anymore
its exhausting to keep smiling when your toes are bleeding on the floor
its a gory sort of story thats been told a hundred times before
don't be sorry just ignore me because honestly
i'm too sore from fitting exactly to ride into setting suns aching to
stand on my own two feet"

"how many wishes do i still have left to fix the way it ends
how many princes do you think
it takes to put a girl like this back together again
how many instances can you point out where i was less than kind
how many happy endings do you need to change your fucking mind
and how much time do we have left before it's midnight and
you see that i was never the right size?"

"Why all these conflicting specifications
Maybe to prevent overpopulation" could make for an excellent male versus female image in some way..somehow showing the differences and misunderstandings between the two?

Oh and obviously coin operated boy for all the sex references.

Sorry..thats a ridiculous amount of quotes..hope its some help..
www.theshadowbox.net is their forum, and its full of fan art that might be of some use..give you some ideas.

They can't really be campared to anyone else.
Well, bands, anyway.
Things in general, would be like... A circus and strip clubs and bad porn.

My few favorite lyrics are:
"Shes the kind of girl who gets her slings and arrows from the dumpster, the kind who'll tell you shes bi-polar just to make you trust her."
And, the line from Girl Anachronism that gill already stated: "Don't call the doctors..."

Alot of their songs make me think of exactly what I said I can compare them to.

Kinda off-topic:
My friend does alot of DD fanart, and she did a picture of a full-face, but its half Amanda's and half Brian's. If I ever get a hold of her sketch book again, I'm going to steal it.

And, for a recent art project, I had to make a paper mache(Spell?) Person (A famous person, to be exact, even though I was the only one in the room who knew who she was.), and I did Amanda. When people would look at it, they were all "WTF, What is that? The clown from 'It'?"

What other bands would you compare them to?
This is hard because I'm not into punk stuff. I really wouldn't be able to say. The closest I've got is Bourbon princess but it's way more smoky-noir than crack-addled schizo. Actually, Reverend Glasseye has a bit in common with the duo. Completely different instrumentation and the singer is a bloke, but their lyrics share that kind of half-manic fervor.

What are your favourite lyrics quotes?

“I can’t fix a car
but I can fix a flat
I can fix a lot of things
But I’d rather not get into that”

“all I know is that all around the nation
the girls are crying and the boys are masturbating”

“I’m taking back the number of the beast
’cause 6 is not a pretty number
8 and 3 are definitely better”

What do some of their songs make you think of?
Their music strikes me in two ways, some songs are jerky (Coin Operated Boy/Girl Anachronism) and the other seem to be slow building torch songs (Truce/Perfect Fit). I like how it all screams of nihilism but that they'd give that the finger too. It's a really raw 'fuck it all, I have to find my own way' band. And they don't glorify it.

What are your favourite lyrics that evoke cool/nice images?
Coin operated boy has to be the best analogy for a vibrator I've ever heard.

It's the domestic things that occur as the most tragic.
“and you thought you could change his mind
by changing your perfume to the kind his mother wore
o god Delilah why?”

“how about a nine-month long vacation and a two-foot coffin”
I always try to imagine what kind of woman could feel that way about stillbirth, must be one hell of a person.

“are they men or are they Memorex?”
Pretty damn clever lyric, and it sounds about right too.

"Coin operated boy has to be the best analogy for a vibrator I've ever heard."

Haha.
I've tried to tell people thats what its about, and they won't believe me.

See I don't think it is about that. Yeh there are hints or whatever to sex toys/vibrators but I've been reading up opinions on it. It's kinda interesting. I'm inclined to agree with people who said Amanada deserves more credit than writing a song purely about a vibrator.

But yeh, I'd actually like to hear any opinions on Coin Operated Boy.

When I spoke to my tutor about who I'd chosen, he mentioned that was his favourite song and I really like it and it's kind of become the main song I'm looking at for images. I somehow got into a victorian/old style thing, with the whole period of Dresden and just something in the song made me think of an old period. I kind of have this image of a big toy room and all these old toys with the COB sitting in the midst of it.

I dunno, it's a good project and I enjoy it but we're meant to ignore the album covers they already have and think about our own so we're not influenced by them. One of my tutors was saying how it doesnt need to look like something they'd choose, which is difficult because you don't wanna do something totally different from the style of music and stuff. If that makes sense?!

Also thank you for that site Gill. I think it'll come in useful. :]

Coin-operated boy in a way can also be about a girl who's been lonely for so long that she finds comfort in a doll/toy.

idk. Kinda what I think.

hmmm thats interesting...like cuddling a teddy?

someone in college said it was like looking for the perfect guy because she's saying she can like turn him on when she wants and he knows what to do and she can just turn him off if he annoys her and stuff.
but then she can't find her perfect guy so she has to settle for the doll one because she keeps ruining things.

i like doing stuff like song meanings

I think a few of their songs are like that. They do have a simple analogy, but they write it as something wholly more romanced so people have something to compare their 'desperation' to. It wouldn't make sense if she talked about a vibrator as the man she wants, but talk about it as if it's a life-like doll...

I wouldn't do coin operated boy..it's too obvious..
To me, yeh it could have deeper meanings, but for the most part it is about choosing a vibrator (if you want to be dirty) or simply a toy (a teddy or doll or whatever) over a real boy for convienence/to save getting hurt.
I dunno, its my least favourite dolls song. it's a bit of fun..but it annoys me a little..it's just a little obvious

I think perfect fit would be my favourite, it builds like a slow glacier and then crashes down ahhh

hmmm before i forget, i need to find out who designed the DD albums covers and stuff like that. does anyone know? it could say in the cd booklet but i dont own the physical albums. do any of you have the album that you could check for me?

thomas martin for the debut
sarah gensert + mark berger, madison house design for yes virginia, though the cover is amanda's own drawing

thank you

big hugs