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Without a word, the duo launched into "Good Day," the album’s opening track. The audience gave no hint of recognition but seemed on the verge of pleasure, as if gently swishing a first mouthful of spŠtlese. "Missed Me" followed, and when it was over, Palmer spoke, quietly. "Gute Nacht," she said calmly, and, in her deep voice, "Good evening. It’s kind of impossible to say how excited we are to be in Dresden, so we’ll keep playing and say nothing."

But the incantatory "Backstabber," which the band hasn’t recorded yet, set off the seismograph, and by the time the Dolls rang up "Coin-Operated Boy," the album’s lead single, there was no question the audience had been won over.

Not above pandering to left-leaning Europeans, Palmer roused the crowd to cheers with a little self-flagellating political rhetoric about George W., whose recent visit to Europe had overlapped with the early part of the Dolls’ tour. "For the last two weeks auf tour, we were followed — how do you say followed, verfolgt? — by George Bush," she said, laying down the set-up line. She waited for applause, which was forthcoming. "Now he’s back on his ranch." Pause. "We don’t know what he does there. Fucks cows. We don’t know. So this is a song to express our feelings about George Bush and the current regime in America." The song was a cover of Black Sabbath’s "War Pigs" that’s become a staple of the Dolls’ live set. As they played, Amanda shook her hair loose and thrashed around the keyboard in what provided the show’s most climactic moments. The crowed pulsed. Fists shook.

The band’s new-found fans were duly impressed, especially with the duo’s theatricality. "That’s not typically American," 27-year-old Dresdener Andre said of the blend of punk and cabaret and pop. And everyone I encountered seemed intrigued by the name Palmer had chosen for the duo. "Why the Dresden Dolls?" Sandro, 24, asked. Andre said, "I thought it was a Dresden band." Susann, 26, who’d made the more-than-two-hour trip from Berlin, served up a juicy backhanded compliment: "I’m astounded that an American knows any German cities. Normally you know your own country and nothing else."

Backstage, the Dolls cooled down with friends and associates. Viglione ate grapes. Palmer swigged a beer. A Canadian performance artist named Marykristn who’d hitchhiked from Berlin for the show sat on the couch, legs curled beneath her.

In the US, Dolls shows regularly attract performance artists — living statues (Palmer’s own performance rŽsumŽ includes her many afternoons as the "Eight-Foot Bride" in Harvard Square), painted mimes, almost-naked women. The Dolls refer to these folks as "the Brigade." A guy in San Francisco recruits them worldwide, largely over the Internet. That’s how Marykristn heard about the Dresden show. She wants to be a circus performer. And she does an expert crab walk. "In general, I am playing with fire," she said in English with a French accent. "But I cannot do it here."

Palmer addressed the matter of the band’s name: "It’s not like I named the band with some giant fucking concept in mind." This despite the Weimar-era trappings of their music and cabaret theatricality, right down to Viglione’s ever-present bowler. She noted that she first encountered it in a work of pulp fiction by V.C. Andrews when she was, "like, 12. It’s taken on meaning as we’ve had to explain it to countless journalists."

"It’s been an awesome name to grow into," Viglione added. "The associations build on it."

As the club urged the band to clear out so it could close up for the night, Palmer gathered her belongings, including a floral-print silk yoga-mat bag. Dirk, the full-time rock-and-roll tour-bus driver on assignment with the Dolls, was waiting in the giant purring bus parked outside. Inside the bus, the carpet was soft, the ceiling plastered with mirrors. The bunks looked snug and warm.

Palmer reviewed the contents of her pillbox — ginseng, Chinese herbs, joint-support pills, grapeseed extract, echinacea pills, multi-vitamins. She’s kind of a health nut. "I exercise a shit ton," mostly yoga, she explained.

And what of the silver vibrator, no bigger than a lipstick case? Does it really vibrate? "But of course," she said, and up her nose it went. Then it was time for the Dolls to sleep, and Dirk to work.