Amanda Palmer with special guest Jason Webley will perform at SPACE Gallery in Portland on Saturday, Nov. 24, at 9 p.m.

Palmer is the lead singer, pianist and lyricist/composer of the “Brechtian punk cabaret” duo The Dresden Dolls, a band that continues to defy explanation and classification. While some have called it theatrical rock, punk cabaret, manic-musical and neo-glam-torch, eventually even the most clever and creative describers shrug and say “You just have to hear it to believe it.”

In Boston, Palmer was involved heavily in musical-theater and formed the Shadowbox Collective, devoted to putting on theatrical shows (such as the 2002 play, “Hotel Blanc,” which she directed) and street theater, and busked as a living statue called “The Eight Foot Bride” in Harvard Square as well as in many other locations.

Palmer conceived a musical, “The Onion Cellar,” which The Dresden Dolls performed in conjunction with the American Repertory Theatre at the Zero Arrow Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., from December 2006 to January 2007.

Palmer is now recording a solo album, “Who Killed Amanda Palmer,” to be released in spring 2008. Ben Folds is producing as well as playing on the album. In July 2007, she played three sold out shows (Boston, Hoboken, and NYC) in rare “with band” performances. Boston alternative rock group Aberdeen City was her backing band.

In August, Palmer traveled to perform in the Spiegeltent and other venues at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, and also performed on BBC 2’s The Edinburgh Show.

In September, she collaborated with Jason Webley to release Evelyn Evelyn’s debut EP, “Elephant Elephant,” via Webley’s Eleven Records.