Evelyn Evelyn – Evelyn Evelyn

Here is the story: Eva and Lyn Neville are conjoined twins connected at the side sharing three legs, two arms, two hearts, three lungs, and one liver. To avoid confusion both simply go by the name “Evelyn.” Their mother died during the childbirth in 1985 on a small Kansas farm. Their childhood is shrouded with mystery until the year 1996 when the two started performing in Dillard and Fullerton’s Traveling Circus. Sometime later the twins’ MySpace profile was discovered by Amanda Palmer (of Dresden Dolls and social networking-fame) and singer-songwriter Jason Webley. The two convinced the twins into joining them in the studio. Only one photo of the twins has been made public and aside from the recording and release of this self-titled debut album, they like to remain private.

Now, here is the truth: Evelyn Evelyn is a music/performance project with Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley playing the roles of the conjoined twin sisters. Modeled as a carnival attraction itself, this Vaudevillian act is filled with show tunes, boisterous instruments, and silly lyrics. I dare to say, it all works magnificently.

The fictionalized tale of the sisters’ life (to this point) is depicted through the three spoken tracks that make up “The Tragic Events of September,” which takes up a large chunk of the album when combined. The narrative unfolds like a freakish bedtime story with the death of their parents, living in a chicken coup, being passed on to a suspicious home for girls, performing as part of a freak show, and creating a MySpace page to find friends. There are several conjoined twin jokes — their first candy is a Twix bar, they are abandoned in Walla Walla, Washington — but from beginning to end it reads as a fascinating satire story.

The album opener, also titled “Evelyn Evelyn,” is a standout piano ballad of the sisters dueling while standing at life’s forks, the personas wanting to take opposite routes. “What shall we wear tonight, what shall we eat today? Can we go ice skating? But we just did that yesterday. Should we be fireman? Can we be astronauts? What if they find us? They’re not looking anyway,” the two sing back and forth. It’s the only tension fueled song, as it portrays the despair of the sisters’ inability to escape each other and their greater situation.

Amanda Palmer has always been a very literal songwriter. A concept album like this is a great vehicle for her type of writing. Most of Evelyn Evelyn sticks to being odes to people or moments of the sisters’ life at some point. “Chicken Man” does little more than continuously repeat the song title over a sinister circus melody. “Sandy Fishnets” quietly pays tribute to the first girl to befriend them. “Elephant Elephant” is very childlike in its appreciation of the circus animal. The big ’80s track “My Space” is the only unneeded song of the bunch.

Closing out is a ukulele cover of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (get it… they’re conjoined twins singing “Love Will Tear Us Apart”). Yes, up to the end the twin references are snuck in there. But by this time either you’ve already been won over, or you threw in the towel a long time ago. So why not keep up the jokes.

Palmer and Webley have taken some shots across the blogoshere for the Evelyn Evelyn concept. They’ve been called offensive, disrespectful, and tasteless — probably all by people that are not a conjoined twin. So let’s all look at the Evelyn sisters for what it is — an art project. Maybe it’s the creative writer in me, but I can’t help but love this album. It has as much literary merit as it does musical merit. At the end Evelyn Evelyn is a story about two sisters who endure in the face of adversity. It celebrates sibling love and finding beauty in our differences. Not the mention the added bonus of fun carnie music for good measure.

Tagged as: showtunes, Washington

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