The Dresden Dolls [ tickets ] brought their theatrical punk-pop to Stubb's Thursday night (3/16), a venue that felt much too large for the group.

The Boston-based band--which took its name from an early single by Britain's rock iconoclasts The Fall--consists of singer/pianist Amanda Palmer and drummer Brian Viglione. And that's covers the entire gamut of onstage personnel.

Separated by a vast distance on the large stage at Stubb's, the pair of Dolls seemed isolated even from each other, a problem that was magnified by the band's inability to connect with a rowdy outdoor crowd that had been primed by earlier sets from Beastie Boys and The Fiery Furnaces.

The problem is not the music; Palmer is an extremely talented torch singer of the Tori Amos variety, and her keyboard work was top notch. She pulled every trick she had out of the bag to create a sense of aural largeness, trying to fill up the spaces where you would normally expect guitar and bass and even movement (both musicians remained seated throughout the set), but the Dolls' somewhat precious songs felt small and slight in this setting.

The band would be better served by performing in a small, dark setting, preferably a room filled with smoke and the clinking of wine glasses. The Dolls combine cabaret-style theatrics with a punky attitude, which results in the unusual mutation of sultry, "pretty" songs littered with profanities and bad-ass posturing. It's a combination that could work out pretty well for the duo, but definitely needs to be guided with tender care.

While Palmer and Viglione did try to connect with what is probably not their usual audience, even including an amped-up version of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs," the end result was something that came off as a campy pastiche instead of the genuine tribute they probably intended it to be.

Or, as an onlooker next to me blurted out, "Check it out: Black Sabbath karaoke!"