The show was ethereal, surreal, funny, mournful, perfect. Evelyn Evelyn started with a song about uncertainty and social suffocation that created the same dark blue, sad, expansive sensation in my lungs and liver as Gary Jules's cover of Mad World. It is quite possibly what outer space feels like. But the show didn't stop with sadness. It also floated through horror, tragicomedy, Oingo Boingo-style circus chaos, American Gothic, ragtime vaudeville and lighthearted, deadpan word games a la a two-headed, effeminate Johnny Carson. There was a shadow puppet show about the girls' excessively tragic birth story. There was an upbeat song about a two-headed elephant. The girls played two popular cover songs, too. Essentially, it was a perfect show for someone with my taste in entertainment.
I want to see them again. Evelyn Evelyn feels Hedwig important.
Oh, right. And everybody was very good at singing and playing instruments and the songs were very good songs. Sharing an accordion in that "each person gets only one arm" fashion must be difficult, but they made it seem as natural as typing or driving.
Their opening act AND sideshow manager/handler Sxip Shirley was perfect too. His high-low tech hip hop approach to the one man band reminded my friends and I of Reggie Watts, who I am still infatuated with after seeing him open for Devo last year. Most satisfactory!
After the Evelyn Evelyn show, Jason Webley played a short--but AWESOME!!!--set, full of audience participation and pirate-like energy before performing a duet with Amanda Palmer (in fancy underwear) who took over the stage for the rest of the evening. I had a wicked, stabby-hot-throat head cold situation AND work in the morning, so I opted to leave after the third song into Amanda Palmer's set even though I very much wanted to stay and stay and stay.
The last song I saw was a mash-up of a cheeky song of hers about an abortion and Happy Birthday sung to a specific audience member. It was a good note to end a very good night upon.
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It's worth mentioning that my lifelong friends Erik and Brian saw Jason Webley as a humble, kinetic one man band on the sidewalk at Bumbershoot about ten years ago, when we were teenagers. They were so impressed that they bought CDs for everyone in our social group, even those of us who couldn't make it to Bumbershoot. I still have that CD. Jason Webley is an enthusiastically loved cult hero out here in Washington, in addition to being a new drag performer alongside the soon-to-be-Mrs.-Neil-Gaiman.
I need to see more of his local shows.
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