Amanda Palmer today releases her brand-new five-song EP New Zealand Survival Songs, featuring material written and recorded during the more than two years spent waylaid in Aotearoa, New Zealand with her young son during the pandemic.
The five track New Zealand Survival Songs EP includes the already released deeply personal duet with legendary Kiwi musician Julia Deans of Fur Patrol, “Little Island”, along with the second single “The Ballad of the New York Times” and “The Man Who Ate Too Much” which featured on the limited-edition 12″.
Palmer, a musician, best-selling author, TED speaker, and community leader, will return to the Australia for “Amanda Palmer Comes Down For a Quick Catch-up: Old Songs, New Songs, New Zealand Survival Songs” an intimate run of concerts in Australia and New Zealand hitting Sydney’s City Recital Hall on February 1 and Melbourne’s Hamer Hall on February 3.
This short tour will see Palmer engaging her devoted fans as only she can, telling stories, revealing the inspiration behind the survival songs, and of course, playing material from her ever-evolving body of work as both solo artist and one-half of The Dresden Dolls, including new songs from the iconic punk cabaret duo’s upcoming new album arranged especially for solo piano
“I’m usually a prolific songwriter, but this period that I spent during lockdown and pandemic-times – ten months in Havelock North, a year and a half on Waiheke – was anything but prolific. I was a solo mother for much of the stay, and most of my days were spent simply scared and disoriented, figuring out how to navigate normal Kiwi life, and trying to figure out my – and my son’s – place in the world. I spent much of the day, every day, wondering when we would go home. It took a very long time to accept what was happening, and there was almost no time for reflection or music-making.
I did, in the end, wind up writing about four songs in total over those few years, and they were mostly songs of catharsis and abject survival. One of them – “The Man Who Ate Too Much”, was written right after the first lockdown and inspired by the kindness of Kiwi strangers, my horror at Donald Trump, my collapsed marriage, and the local landscape; I’d been gazing at the outline Te Mata peak in Hawke’s Bay, and the lyrics draw on the Māori Myth of the Taniwha who tried to eat through the mountain and choked to death.
“The Ballad of The New York Times” was written on Waiheke to try to describe my desperate relationship with the isolation of motherhood and doom-scrolling. “Whakenewha” is a howl of emotion inspired by the beautiful and haunting preserve of the same name on Waiheke, and “Little Island” is my complicated and heartfelt love letter to New Zealand and to the people who held and took care of me, as well as a pondering about our collectively difficult relationships with the past, and what “home” really means.
I’m so looking forward to catching up with my hometown down under. I’ve missed everybody.”
AUSTRALIA/NEW ZEALAND TOUR 2024
Sun 21 Jan – Queenstown – Sherwood *SOLD OUT*
Wed 24 Jan – Auckland, Q Theatre
Sat 27 Jan – Wellington, Old St Pauls
Thurs 1 Feb – Sydney, City Recital Hall
Tickets on sale 8am AEDT, Thursday Nov 23
Sat 3 Feb – Melbourne, Hamer Hall
Tickets on sale 10am AEDT, Thursday Nov 23
