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Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn?
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Wikipedia article
"'Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn?'" is a song by the fictional musical duo Evelyn Evelyn, created and portrayed by American musicians Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley. It is included on their 2007 EP 'Elephant Elephant' and their 2010 album 'Evelyn Evelyn'.
Background and lyrics
Evelyn Evelyn is a fictional musical duo created and portrayed by American musicians Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley. The duo consists of Evelyn and Evelyn Neville, a pair of conjoined twins said to have been discovered in 2007 by Palmer and Webley. "Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn?" is the fourth track on Evelyn Evelyn's self-titled debut studio album, released in 2010, a concept album about the sisters' lives.
The lyrics of "Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn?" comically frame the twins' relationship as though they were not conjoined, and one of the two "enjoys a life of sleeping around."
Music video
The official live-action/animated music video for "Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn?", released in 2011, was directed by Hoku Uchiyama. The video depicts the Evelyns, portrayed in live-action by Palmer and Webley, creating drawings on a foggy window that come to life in the style of rubber hose animation. Alongside Uchiyama, the video's production team included producer and lead animator Adam Bolt, digital composite artists Michael Scott and Travis Gorman, and producers Matt Miller and Erich Lochner.
To create the desired effect for the video, the filming crew tested how to film condensation on glass for several weeks. On the day of shooting, the camera was unable to adequately capture footage of the condensation, so the crew improvised a solution using water and dulling spray, which they later reproduced digitally. The animation was then added on top of the layer of condensation, which was itself on top of a layer of live-action footage of Palmer and Webley as the Evelyns. Scott and Gorman used the software Nuke for compositing, and Mocha for motion tracking; Bolt and a team of animators created the animation frame-by-frame.
The video won the award for Best Music Video at the 2012 Byron Bay International Film Festival.
Reception
Scott Thill of 'Wired' called the song "a ragtime laugher", and 'PopMatters' David Amidon called it an "Album highlight [...] a fun song, but there's little explanation in the narrative for its existence." Heather Phares, in a positive review of the album for AllMusic, wrote that "Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn?", along with the album's eighth track, "Elephant Elephant", each give "the Ditty Bops a three-legged run for their money."
Personnel
Adapted from the album's liner notes.From the album's liner notes.
* Evelyn and Evelyn Neville (Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley) vocals, piano, ukulele, guitar, accordion
* Amanda Palmer piano, Wurlitzer
* Jason Webley accordion
* Tim Smolens contra bass
;Production
* Jason Schimmel engineering
* Tim Smolens engineering, mixing, and editing
* Jason Webley engineering
* John Golden mastering
References
Category:2010 songs
Category:Songs about siblings
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