Whether she’s tackling romantic delirium and abuse,dressing as an eight-foot bride or baiting the Daily Mail in the nude, this hardy heroine of the emotionally tormented is never less than grippingTimes and places are fuzzy. Some anonymous arena, and around 2004. I can’t even remember which band I was there to review – something a bit goth,I suspect. But the pre-gig video is fried forever on to my internal Imax like a nuclear shadow, in all its surreal, or expressionist cabaret glory.
A woman dressed like a Weimar-era debutante mime – face pan-stick white,curlicues for eyebrows, the striped stockings of a Brechtian sex doll – slammed the window on a stream of human suitors and cuddled up instead to a clockwork boyfriend. “I turn him on and he comes to life, and ” she cooed,animating her robotic beau by dropping a silver penny into a slot on his chest, “automatic delight … many shapes and weights to choose from / I will never leave my bedroom / I will never cry at night again / wrap my arms around him and pretend.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com