Week Ten Album Review................Evelyn Evelyn .........Evelyn Evelyn

[gryphon]

I will dedicate this tenth review to Music Head ( As I have caused him a few problems with the down loads over the last few weeks but hope this will make amends )

What to do

go to url :

Evelyn Evelyn Music

Scroll down to the bottom of the ee page and you see

"Get the entire album instantly HERE."

click on the "here"

Go to the first track

then press the play button for each track and each should then load and play ( Ignore the buy it for 6.66 that is only for people who want to buy it after hearing it !)

( all fingers are crossed)

then you can here the tracks and use their official site for info on the band.


( I think this is the preferred format for the future because as I outlined in review nine we will have greater success and fewer problems)

If you find a site like this let me know , then we can use it in the future .
( I have noticed that the unofficial download sites are being monitored and this method should keep us free fro m trouble).

So lets hope it is happy reviewing for all and if we get problems ......let me know and we will try to work them out and keep this going

[Music Head]

lmao

So are you able to listen to this?

It wants me to pay $6.99 for the album or .99 for each track.

I know you said ignore that, but when I click on play, a pop up comes up for pay info.

Am I doing something wrong here?

[Music Head]

duh

never mind

I figured it out

sorry bud

[gryphon]

I'm glad you have done it........did not want to disappointing you againmile:

[Music Head]

ok, great, I'm on this one like white on rice!!!

Reviewing each track as I listen.

1) Evelyn Evelyn - 3.0 - simply marvelous. Excellent music with the strings. excellent vocals with the back and forth between the two.

2) A Campaign of Shock And Awe - 2.5 - carnival atmosphere. barkers touting the show, then the two evelyns talking to each other. funny and good.

3) The Tragic Events of September Part 1 - 2.0 - Not really a song, but a spoken word piece with some backing piano and strings. Details the birth of the conjoined twins, with the doctor bringing in a chain saw to set the matter right. 4 human deaths and a bunch of chickens, with a truck driver ending up with the babies. lmao.

4) Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn? - 1.5 - a little ragtime. Interesting, but I didnt get this. Isnt she right next to her?

5) Chicken Man - 1.0 - a big step down here with the repetition of the words "chicken man" and not much else but some bad music.

6) The Tragic Events Part 2 - 1.5 - a rather long tedious spoken word with piano backing this is necessary to tell the story I guess. Details the years of their kidnapping where they were raised in a chicken coop and how they ended up with the traveling circus.

7) Sandy Fishnets - 2.5 - The story of Andy, the twins caretaker during their inital captivity after escaping the chicken man. A strange tale of her background. Beautiful music.

8) Elephant Elephant - 1.5 - a rather silly circus music type song about the twins love of elephants.

9) You Only Want Me 'Cause You Want My Sister - 3.0 - The track that initiated my interest and request to review this album. Love the steel guitar and fiddle in here. The song title speaks for itself.

10) The Tragic Events Part 3 - 1.5 - A further telling of the story after the girls escape the circus and strike out on their own by discovering social networking sites and how to upload videos. lol

11) My Space - 2.5 - The most musically diverse track I guess with horns and electric guitar spicing it up. Love that line You can't always want what you get, when you're looking for love, in a cafe on the intenet."

12) Love Will Tear Us Apart - Yes, the Joy Division track. Done very simply, with piano and a ukalele. Pretty.

Not an album for all obviously being the concept thing. I really enjoyed the listen and can't wait for the movie.
Gave it an overall rating of 2.0. Not the love stage but it may be a buy at some point.

thanks gryphon

[gryphon]

The initial view of this album is a bit like “Being For The Benefit of Mr Kite” from Sgt Pepper…………..one can smell the sawdust and here the sounds of a circus………………and it is in that vein that I believe this album should be taken…………………….initially I wondered if all that I saw was all that you get ( Is that a new form of wysiwyg ? { What you see is what you get} ) and the answer is no. If you look at the Evelyn, Evelyn entry for the Wiki , you can see that this is a clever marketing ploy. There are real musicians behind this wacky but clever marketing ploy ……
So what do we get musically? We are promised this ……Drawing on their background in circus performance and an eclectic range of unlikely influences, the Evelyn sisters have crafted a collection of timeless new genre-bending songs full of humor, sadness and double entrendre.
Over three years in the making, "Evelyn Evelyn" incorporates the talents of over forty musicians and special guests to create a playfully dark musical landscape filled with diverse orchestration. The result is a blend of story and song quite unlike anything you've heard before.
So let`s see……………………. let the story unfold.
Track One “Evelyn Evelyn” is like entering a child’s nursery…with eerie overtones……….gentle if uncertain vocal harmonies….. sounds like a nursery rhyme but there is a twist…its poignant , clever and quite seductive………….. it has the feel of Nursery cryme by Genesis and yet we are in 2010! Two voices in one song ….joined yet separate …..
Track Two :A Campagain Of Shock And Awe We are out on the streets in a Dickensian freak show……..all the fun of the fair is here all the menace and yet there is poetry……….. This is classy mind manipulation……….picture painting with music………….just what the doctor ordered.[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
Track Three The Tragic Events Of September Part 1……..Did Alice Cooper “Welcome Us To This Nightmare ???” I bet he wished he had.
The story of the factious birth is told and we enter the beginning of the story of Evelyn and Everyln. All the elements of a great “Hammer horror “ is created here. The control of the orchestration and the narrative helps to build the pictures in your mind
Track four Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn ? Vaudaville style is here to give you an insight into “Sister Evelyn “ …I feel that Lou Reed would recognize the feel of this and maybe Brecht too.
Track Five “ The Chicken Man” The Russian dance style “Chicken Man” seemed like a sound track to a dance interval and fills in the scene of where the story takes place…… maybe live that is just what is intended. …….I guess this is an excellent show to see live!
Track Six “ Tragic Events Part 2” We are again in the stream of conscious narrative we find out more about the twins. We find out about the middle times of their early lives…….the narrative is both touching and gripping ……we move down and through the world of the unusual and its exploitation…..where are we heading? What world are we really in? We see a reflection of how strange a world of being different can be. The freak show world is introduced…..this is the fate of those who are different. The concept of “Uncle” makes you think and wonder …………..is it or is it not?
Track Seven…”Sandy Fishnets” ….choir boy vocals tells us the next part of the tale. Time to escape the freak show world and go abroad.! Pirates and sea ! Again you can smell the salty spray……and feel the toss of the waves.
Track Eight. “Elephant Elephant” cleverly the narrative moves on its jolly way . This almost a kids fun song ………Nice effects and good light hearted moment. Still Lou Reed sits in the audience thinking that he too had written in this style….Intelligent lever word play to frame an interesting image.
Track Nine “ You Only Want Me Because You Want My Sister” Any folk artist would have loved to have written this song …..
Track Ten . “Tragic Events Part 3”..They dream of being apart …….we are nineteen and have left the circus world……………..on to another dull world and exploitation raises its head…but music starts to play a part. ……………….They begin to perform in a new way.
Track Eleven “My Space” …..a cyber song reflecting a new twist to the tail and the bad shows that they can handle another style of musical approach well. Nice flowing guitar work here. Somehow this approach reminded me of “Heaven Can Wait” from Bat Out Of Hell …..not so much in sound but in atmosphere.
Track Twelve “ Love Will Tear Us Apart” All through the album I wondered , was this a cover of the Joy Division song or not? And it is ……was this the inspiration for the whole concept? If it was then I just love it ………..ask for the cover?? it is a sensitive climax to an excellent story.

As concept albums go, this is a corker ! Clever, entertaining , musically diverse and captivating!

[gryphon]

Evelyn Evelyn is a really interesting choice .....have a listen and write a review

[Iota]

My first impression - the first few seconds - was that Evelyn Evelyn made the soundtrack to some kind of 'Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There' movie. After a while, though, it became some pretentious 'dark cabaret' vaudeville garbage. Don't get me wrong, I quite like that burlesque stuff but Evelyn Evelyn suck. Again and again, Amandas "singing" is plain annoying squealing (see 'Sandy Fishnets') and songs such as 'You Only Want Me 'Cause You Want My Sister' or 'My Space' are bog-standart mediocre folk and pop songs respectively.

I'm not against macabre jokes per se, but these stories are neither funny nor very enthralling or original. In fact, Evelyn Evelyn is one big joke about disabled people made by some self-congratulatory artsy fartsy 'artists' (not that this is art, but, w/e) jumping on the hipster ableism bandwagon that's selling oh so well these days.

[warped]

I have to agree with Iota on this one. I thought the vocals were so pretentious that it was sometimes overwhelming, even disturbing.
Not my cup of tea.

[Music Head]

thanks for participating guys