Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn?

"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.

"Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn?"
Song by Evelyn Evelyn
from the album Evelyn Evelyn
GenreRagtime[1][2]
Length2:13
Label
  • 11 Records
  • 8ft. records
Producer(s)

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.[3]

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."[4]

Music video

The official live-action/animated music video for "Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn?", released in 2011, was directed by Hoku Uchiyama.[5] The video depicts the Evelyns, portrayed in live-action by Lexi and Nikki Ibrahim, creating drawings on a foggy window that come to life in the style of rubber hose animation.[5] 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 of production company Vanishing Angle.[5]

To create the desired effect for the video, the filming crew tested how to film condensation on glass for several weeks.[5] 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.[5] 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 the Ibrahim sisters as the Evelyns.[5] Scott and Gorman used the software Nuke for compositing, and Mocha for motion tracking;[5] Bolt and a team of animators created the animation frame-by-frame.[5]

The video won the award for Best Music Video at the 2012 Byron Bay International Film Festival.[6]

Reception

Scott Thill of Wired called the song "a ragtime laugher",[1] and PopMatters' David Amidon called it an "Album highlight [...] a fun song, but there's little explanation in the narrative for its existence."[4] 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."[7]

Personnel

References
  1. Thill, Scott (March 29, 2010). "Amanda Palmer Freaks Out With Evelyn Evelyn". Wired. Retrieved August 23, 2022.
  2. Gaiman, Neil (2017). The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0062262271.
  3. "Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley on the True Identity of Evelyn Evelyn". Flavorwire. March 29, 2010. Retrieved August 23, 2022.
  4. Amidon, David (May 4, 2010). "Evelyn Evelyn: Evelyn Evelyn". PopMatters. Retrieved August 23, 2022.
  5. von Baldegg, Kasia Cieplak-Mayr (October 13, 2011). "Brilliant Animated Music Video for 'Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn'". The Atlantic. Retrieved August 23, 2022.
  6. "Byron Bay Film Festival (BBFF) – And the Winners Are..." Byron Bay International Film Festival. Archived from the original on April 7, 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  7. Phares, Heather. "Evelyn Evelyn Review". AllMusic. Retrieved August 23, 2022.
  8. From the album's liner notes.
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