Amanda Fucking Palmer! Anyone with an expletive in their stage moniker must be good, and the Boston musician certainly lived up to her middle name. Running onstage, all smiles and flowers and red hair, Palmer immediately hopped onto her beloved piano and started chopping away on the keys to the Dresden Dolls tune Sex Changes. In her haphazard, slightly dangerous and enthusiastic style that she is known for, Palmer accidentally pressed the harpsichord setting while pounding away at the ivories, and then in an attempt to switch it back to piano somehow set off an electro drum backing. “Can someone come up here and change it to the piano setting while I look sexy?” Palmer half sung in to the microphone, refusing to stop playing. “And I was going so well… but it wouldn’t be an Amanda Palmer show if it didn’t suck immediately!”

Palmer was wrong though. The crowd were completely enthralled and hypnotised by Palmer’s performance – regardless of any 80s electro backings or cheesy harpsichords. Although not as crazy and theatrical as her Dresden Dolls days, Palmer gave the crowd one heck of a show, that was intimate despite the large venue and energetic despite the lack of a backing band for the most part.

It would seem that Palmer loves Melbourne as much as it loves her. During her show, she revealed her “grand plan” to move to Melbourne for a few months next winter (and she may have also accidentally told us about a possible Dresden Dolls tour and a “super secret” musical she’s working on). For her current tour, she apparently stayed in our great city for a few weeks with some friends of her fiancé Neil Gaiman, where she discovered her hatred for a certain Australian icon at the breakfast table: vegemite. Her dislike of the spread inspired her to write a song, “kind of a gift to Australia… they’ve given me a home and I’m so happy to be here.” Despite Palmer’s profuse apologies for the roughness of the new and yet untitled track, the vegemite-hate song had the audience in stitches over the lyrics. “How can you love vegemite? It tastes like sadness. It tastes like memories. It takes like asses. I love you no matter what you eat, I might just leave the room when you eat this foul deathpaste…”.

The special guest of the evening was Paul Kelly, and those in the crowd who hadn’t heard via Triple J the day before that he was playing were completely shocked and ecstatic. One particular punter squealed and kept pointing out to everyone around her, “That’s Paul Kelly. Holy shit, that’s Paul Kelly. Did you know that’s Paul Kelly?” Even Palmer herself was in awe of the legend, simply turning to him at one point with a gaping mouth and said, “Oh my god. It’s Paul Kelly.” The pair played a beautiful rendition of Wintercoat, one of Kelly’s songs from his days with The Messengers.

The other guests to grace the stage with Palmer included her former touring violinist Linden (who arranged some of the night’s string sections, and brought two fellow violinists along), the excellent opening band The Jane Austin Argument and Mick Harvey. Together with her various ensembles of musicians, Palmer played a delectable mix of crowd pleasing The Dresden Dolls tracks ( Missed Me, The Time Has Come, Coin Operated Boy ), brilliant songs from her solo album Who Killed Amanda Palmer ( Astronaut ), covers of her favourite bands ( Henry Lee from Harvey’s band Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, Radiohead’s Exit Music (For A Film), Regina Spektor’s The Flowers and some brand spanking new material. With Palmer’s street performer background and mad improvisation skills, it’s unsurprising that many of the songs weren’t rehearsed. Halfway through Palmer decided that Leeds United needed a work out. “Talk amongst yourselves!” Palmer instructed the punters, before hurrying about the stage gesticulating wildly to the various players. “Hello, watch this. Okay, this might really, really suck…” Palmer warned us before they launched into a spirited and slightly out of time rendition of the Who Killed Amanda Palmer track during which Palmer yelled out a mid-song direction or two at the musicians. Despite the mistakes, the crowd loved every second and as soon as Palmer and company walked off stage, the Forum was filled with cheers and stomping for her return, not even giving the cabaret genius a chance for a breather.

The composer came back onstage solo for her encore, playing The Dresden Dolls era songs Half Jack and Girl Anachronism. In typical Palmer fashion, she ran offstage and the crowd immediately began searching the side balconies and the back of the venue to see where she may pop up. A spotlight swung over the side balcony, where she was nestled among the famous statues of The Forum, singing Radiohead’s Creep on a ukulele with the crowd. I believe what Palmer meant to say earlier was, “It wouldn’t be an Amanda Palmer show if it didn’t blow you away completely.”