Theatre Is Evil
- Amanda Palmer & the Grand Theft Orchestra
- Band Name: Amanda Palmer & the Grand Theft Orchestra
- Record Label: 8ft. Records
- Release Date: Sep 11, 2012
- Critic Score
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Sep 10, 2012100In every sense, Theatre Is Evil sounds like a million dollars.
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Oct 5, 201290In Theatre Is Evil, Palmer hasn't just topped her best releases to date. She's done it with room to spare.
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Sep 18, 201287This record isn't simply a record, it's an emotional, intricate experience that keeps on after the instrumental break.
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Sep 17, 201280The record is the most unvarnished rock music Palmer's ever created, leaning heavily on '80s goth and the oddball New Wave of folks like Lene Lovich.
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Sep 14, 201280Theatre is Evil bristles, crackles, aches, and moans with surprising efficiency considering its 15-song length, pairing fractured synths and staccato guitar riffs with Palmer's throaty, untamed pipes, sounding for all the world like a brazenly cool, alternate-universe version of No Doubt.
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Sep 7, 201280Around two thirds of Theatre Is Evil's songs are bolted to the chassis of a loud, poppy guitar band, bringing inescapably to the fore Palmer's gift for killer-catchy melodies and stratospheric contrapuntal arrangements.
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Sep 6, 201280Most of the record is a vivid splurge of new wave, glam-rock and showtunes, armed with lyrics as punchy and memorable as their melodies. [Oct 2012, p.108]
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Sep 6, 201280Theatre Is Evil feels like sitting on the bed of your tattooed, far cooler cousin 30 years ago, while she tells you "all you need to know" about music.
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Sep 6, 201280Palmer captures the human condition like no other artist. {Oct 2012, p.90]
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Sep 6, 201280The faithful will lap up every eccentric note, of course, but there's much here for the uninitiated to delight in as well.
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Oct 4, 201278The album is all about big and big is what you get.
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Sep 11, 201274Kitsch aside, Amanda Palmer is one hell of a musician and lyricist, and this album, thankfully, makes good on its million-dollar expectations.
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Oct 4, 201270One of the year's best rock records.
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Sep 18, 201270This isn't a record you dismiss on one spin and parts require some work from the listener, but given proper attention Theatre Is Evil unfolds into something multilayered and quite lovely.
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Sep 10, 201270If you like a theatrical sound with a dose of anarchy, quirk and unpredictability, this record comes highly recommended.
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Nov 8, 201260Palmer seems intent on cramming as many ideas and textures into every song as she can, which is exciting at first but exhausting by the halfway point of an excessively long album.
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Oct 5, 201260Perhaps the best way to approach Theatre Is Evil is not even as an album, but rather a collection of songs--all fairly similar but often good, sometimes very much so.
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Sep 6, 201245The gut-wrenching moments are too often usurped by lost wallets, Instagram photos, and tales of songs on the radio--none of which add up to anything greater than the sun of their parts. [Aug/Sep 2012, p.113]