Yes, Virginia

Like another incandescent Boston band, the Pixies, the Dresden Dolls represent a genre unto themselves. A throwback to the era of gas lamps with their vaudevillian showmanship and wicked, stagey humor, the Dolls—singer/keyboardist Amanda Palmer and jaw-dropping drummer Brian Viglione—could light a futuristic metropolis with their lunatic energy. On the followup to the group’s charming debut, Palmer’s rhapsodic imagination finds new expression in the opening romp “Sex Changes” and the surprisingly tender ballad “First Orgasm.” “Life is no cabaret,” she bellows on “Sing,” but she’s doing her damnedest.