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Amanda Palmer's Songs Ring Out With Urgency And Compassion, Fury And Love

Amanda Palmer has made a living out of delivering emotionally sobering strikes. From her early street performing days dressed as an 8-foot bride handing flowers and intense eye contact to passers-by through her current album cover, where she stands completely full frontal naked wielding a sword overhead, Palmer has always demanded we see her and feel something. You don't get to call yourself "Amanda F****** Palmer" for nothing. But Palmer's latest album, There Will Be No Intermission, may be her sharpest blow yet.

The album contains songs about climate change, compassion, losing a friend, losing a baby, having abortions and becoming a mother. The songs ring out with urgency and compassion, fury and love. There are moments of stunning brutality and absolute gentleness. "It's the most personal thing I've ever made," Palmer told me. "There is a part of me just sitting there, clenching my teeth, going, 'I really, really don't want this one to be misinterpreted — I really don't want this one to be misunderstood.'"

Part of her fear stems from the way the media has reacted to her work in the past. We talk about why she feels that "there are some journalists out there who just love hating me." Palmer also shares stories of her own miscarriage and abortions, along with why it was important to her to write "Voicemail for Jill" about the latter. And she performs "The Ride," an opus that is equal parts haunting and comforting, with an aftertaste that lasts far longer than the song's 10-plus-minute duration.

Palmer's work, and even her very presence, are not for the faint of heart or cynical of spirit. During our time together, about halfway through performing the very first song, "Drowning in the Sound," Palmer smashed her forearm to the keys of a Steinway with the brute force of a heavyweight champion boxer. Moments later, she stood over the piano and yelled into its body, as if howling into the intergalactic void, as she will continue to do on her upcoming tour. When it was all over, I couldn't help but feel I had just spent 12 rounds in the boxing ring of the human condition — bruised, tired, inspired, rattled and changed.

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Talia Schlanger hosts World Cafe, which is distributed by NPR and produced by WXPN, the public radio service of the University of Pennsylvania. She got her start in broadcasting at the CBC, Canada's national public broadcaster. She hosted CBC Radio 2 Weekend Mornings on radio and was the on-camera host for two seasons of the television series CBC Music: Backstage, as well as several prime-time music TV specials for CBC, including the Quietest Concert Ever: On Fundy's Ocean Floor. Schlanger also guest hosted various flagship shows on CBC Radio One, including As It Happens, Day 6 and Because News. Schlanger also won a Canadian Screen Award as a producer for CBC Music Presents: The Beetle Roadtrip Sessions, a cross-country rock 'n' roll road trip.
World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).
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