The latest scandal to involve Ms. Palmer is one that is a hotbed of discussion on many forums, debating the morals and merits of her newest project, Evelyn Evelyn. Quite awhile ago, Amanda announced that she and longtime friend and fellow musician Jason Webley had discovered a pair of conjoined twin sisters who were also musically skilled. The sisters, Amanda said, went by the single name Evelyn and had the nasty habit of finishing each other's sentences. They were strange beyond comprehension, refusing to do interviews, afraid of people with facial hair, and terrified of planes; therefore, Amanda said, she thought travel or touring would be impossible for them. But via her blogs and Twitters, she swore that the twins were terrific musicians, had to be heard to be believed, and that she and Jason both felt that it was very important to get their message out to the world. The twins, she said, had been sold to a circus when they were young and had been sexually molested for their entire childhoods, resulting in their fractured and fragmented minds. They were either madly in love with each other or fighting like cats and dogs, depending on the moment, and they were very difficult to get on the phone so that Jason and Amanda could coordinate their studio time.
As time stretched on, the fans began to grow more and more interested in the project, and Amanda's answers became more and more elusive and mysterious. Jason, always the more tacit of the two, remained mostly mum on the situation. Eventually, however, the word got out--- Evelyn was a scam, a product of Amanda and Jason's crazed collaboration, a strange artistic role they were playing for an upcoming project. A designer made dresses that both of them could fit into, to make them appear as conjoined twins; Jason shaved his long-standing facial hair and wore makeup for the single press photograph that the pair leaked.
Some fans were outraged, feeling duped and deceived; they felt that they had come to care about the sisters, the intricate tale of their complex and fascinating lives. They had felt sympathy for the two victims of sexual abuse, social ostracism and workplace exploitation; they had been eager to support these twins in their rise to stardom and their escape from their terrible pasts. Now that they knew that it was just a marketing scheme by Amanda and Jason, a new way to stir up controversy and attention from the notorious talking-point Amanda more specifically, they were angry.
Others were infuriated because they felt it was ableist, completely exploiting the plight of real conjoined twins and disabled individuals as well as those who had suffered sexual abuse or discrimination in order to sell records. "Glorified cripdrag", several feminist and disabled-activist blogs called it snidely, enraged that Amanda and Jason would have the balls to actually pretend to be conjoined. It was a gimmick, nothing more than an attempt to garnish attention to their collaborative side project.
Still others argued adamantly that this was what art was about; it was controversial, it was painful, it made you think. Obviously Amanda and Jason had been successful to some degree because people had been duped for a very long time in regards to the project; its sneaky execution and clever subterfuge meant that there were people completely taken into the illusion, the smoke and mirrors doing their jobs perfectly. Amanda and Jason were creating a buzzworthy project, something that made people argue and debate; that was the entire point of true art, not just putting out records but putting out something meaningful. Was this album really any different than, say, David Bowie taking on any of his personas, Ziggy Stardust or The Thin White Duke, coming out onstage in the costume and mannerisms, singing autobiographical songs about a man who never existed? Was there a difference between this Evelyn Evelyn project and The Who's Tommy? It was just a concept album, about a fictional pair of conjoined twin sisters. If the music was good, who cared if it was actually performed by sisters from Walla Walla, Washington?
When the album dropped at the very end of March (very nearly timed to be an April Fool's joke, actually), I picked it up via iTunes out of curiousity. My chagrin over some of Amanda's more recent publicity stunts aside, I still love her music, and I've seen her play live four different times; seeing the girl whale on a piano or strum a ukelele while she sings her heart out is truly something to behold. And honestly, I'd never heard of Jason Webley prior to Amanda's constantly touting him in her blog; he's got a big underground following, but he wasn't anyone on my radar until the last year or so. So I gave Evelyn Evelyn a try.
Honestly, the first advice I can give you is that if you're a fan of either musician independently, chuck your preconceived notions of how they sound out the window. Amanda's voice is softer, less abrasive than any of her work has showcased to date, and Jason's is feminine and feathery. Their music is strange, definitely capturing the old-fashioned circus vibe of the twins' backstory, but at the same time the tracks with narration, such as "The Tragic Events of September", are genuinely haunting and eerie.
The opening track, "A Campaign of Shock and Awe", depicts several vocalists taking turns as barkers and ringleaders, touting the freakshow that is the sisters. Meanwhile, the sisters harmonize the line "Isn't it nice that they're being so nice to us? / If I'm not mistaken I think they might like us / Aren't we lucky to be here? Stop moving, they're taking a picture! Smile for the camera, Evelyn!", alternating who sings which line each reprise. This is our introduction to the Evelyn twins; they are depicted as freaks of nature, God's blunder, and we hear people arguing over how much to charge for their novelty. From there, we are taken on a whirlwind of oddities. The song "Chicken Man", about the chicken farmer who raised the girls and kept them in a cage, fed like his fowl for years before his demise, is creepy and unsettling, discordant and odd. There is a lot of accordion in this song, as well as strange Danny Elfman-style vocal work. When listening to "The Tragic Events Part II", we are told the story of how the chicken farmer died while the girls were locked in the cage, and no one knew to come and let them out; they were there for days, starving, before they finally broke free and stumbled into the open air. The song "Chicken Man" consists entirely of the two title words being repeated, first in normal singing voices, growing increasingly desperate to get the man's attention before degenerating into howling horror as they realize he isn't coming and they're going to starve. I've never before heard a song that incorporates only two words and somehow still tells a story with them.
The eery unsettling feeling brought on by this song is complimented nicely by "Evelyn Evelyn", the title song where the two sisters sing gently to each other. Amanda plays the more optimistic of the sisters, while Jason's takes a more literal and maternal approach. He is the more mature sister, the one who comforts Amanda's sister in several of the songs. Jason's twin is also the more promiscuous of the two it would seem, singing lines such as "Do you think I should marry him?" while Amanda counters "You just met him yesterday!" The song has a very soft feel of loneliness, and for a moment we the audience are transported into this strange bisected world, sympathetic to what it would be like to wonder if you could be an astronaut or a fireman, if your entire life revolved around your sister and you had never been your own person for even a moment of your life.
Some of the songs, such as "Elephant Elephant" and "Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn?" are firmly tongue-in-cheek and playful, jaunty tunes that will get in your head and refuse to come out without a fight. "My Space" is a joking dedication to finding love on the Internet, pointing to the fictional way that Amanda and Jason 'discovered' the Evelyn sisters (they claimed that someone anonymously sent them a link to the Evelyn sisters' Myspace and that was where the friendship began). The song has a soaring 80s sound to it musically, complete with amusingly epic vocal work and a strange back-echo on Jason's vocals in particular, but I feel that it's a weaker point on the album and doesn't jive with the rest of the sound. On the other hand, if the album is meant to be as confusing, inconsistent and schizophrenic as the sisters themselves, it's a roaring triumph.
The album is rounded out with a gorgeous cover of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart", featuring melancholy ukelele strumming and absolutely beautiful, soft voice work; in this rendition Amanda is heartbreaking, her voice cracking on the highest notes, and Jason is hauntingly melodic. The two of them sound like they are singing each other a lullaby that is startling in its intimacy, the plinking piano work accompanying it adding to the surreal ephemeral quality.
In short, without delving into my feelings about the controversy surrounding its origin, Evelyn Evelyn is a provocative effort. I believe that it set out to do what it meant to do; it created an outlet for the two musicians to collaborate without being Amanda Palmer or Jason Webley. Amanda was no longer the sassy and shameless redhead who is ever-vocal about her sex life, her discontent with her record label, and it's impossible to picture the beard-sporting street performer Jason toting an accordion and a slouchy hat when listening to this music. No, we are transported into a striped circus tent where for ten bucks a head (the cost of the album on iTunes, incidentally) one can catch a glimpse with the exotic Evelyn Sisters, and that is exactly what was intended in the creation of this album.
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