The newly freed Amanda Palmer releases today her first official venture out since splitting with Road Runner Records a few months ago. The title of the EP is  Amanda Palmer Performs The Popular Hits Of Radiohead On Her Magical Ukulele and is exactly what it says it is. There are a few occasions where Palmer receives assistance from a toy piano and some percussion but mostly it’s all her.

The whole thing is an interesting twist on pre-Amnesiac Radiohead tunes. I probably won’t be rushing out to make a purchase but it’s definitely a novelty album.

Still riding the high of being released from Roadrunner Records, Amanda Palmer is using her new found freedom to the best of her ability and is releasing a Radiohead cover album with each song being performed on her ukulele with accompaniment from a toy piano which will be released on July 17th. The album will be called Amanda Palmer Performs The Popular Hits of Radiohead on Her Magical Ukulele and will be on a donation basis with a minimum price of $0.84 per song with $0.54 going back to Radiohead for the legal use of the song and the rest going to paypal for the transaction fee. The album will be a 5-track EP featuring the most well known Radiohead songs that have been covered by every bar band over the past 15 years. In addition to the download option the album will also be released in a limited 1,000 only vinyl edition that will be packaged with special extras like ukuleles hand-painted by Amanda (inspired by the various songs she’s covered), as well as a personal phone call from Amanda, during which she’ll take song requests (limited, obviously, to her narrow repertoire of Radiohead-via-ukulele covers). There’s no price on that yet but I’ll bet you it won’t be cheap.

Hearing Palmer perform “Creep” is nothing new. She’s been performing the song since 2008 when she took up the instrument as a joke for a friend’s benefit concert for Iranian punk musicians. There are numerous videos on YouTube of her performing the song live but they are all fan recorded videos and the sound is pretty crap. The video below is still image but it’s the best recording that I was able to find.

The first single from the album is “Idioteque”, which can be listened to and purchased for $0.40 at Palmer’s website.

From the press release Palmer had this to say.

I’m slaphappy with freedom…and this is the perfect project to celebrate with. I’m really proud of the way this record wound up sounding…it’s actually a lot more emotional than I expected. Radiohead songs almost play themselves because the songwriting is so genius, and the ukulele is perfect for laying that genius bare. I tried to strip the songs down as far as possible without destroying them.

“Idioteque”

“Creep”
“No Suprises”
“High and Dry”
“Fake Plastic Trees”
Exit Music (For a Film) (feat. Zoë Keating and Lyndon Chester)

The Cure will reissue their timeless 1989 gothic masterpiece Disintegration on May 25. Across the pond? The day before.

Included therein, this previously-unreleased track — among many others, apparently — “Delirious Night.” It is nice work, a better cut than, say, “Homesick” or “untitled,” but it simply wouldn’t have fit. Disintegration remains as one of the most cohesive works of the decade: a project in every sense of the word. But this fact puts a reissue under some pretty heavy scrutiny.

So while the present correspondent takes no umbrage with a musician trying to earn a living, even a bit crassly, he doesn’t have to recommend you part with your hard-earned, either.

Listen to the track just below. And find source of the title quote, here.

You can read her lengthy blog post about the split as well as the letter that she wrote to Roadrunner Records here.

And this post wouldn’t be complete without this video.

The latest single off the album is a full on 80′s arena rock ballad complete with Phil Collins “In The Air Tonight” drum line, tender male female opening, killer guitar solo and closing special guest choir which features Frances Bean Cobain, Andrew W.K., “Weird Al” Yankovic, and graphic novelist/Palmer fiancé Neil Gaiman. Pretty gimmicky track but a pretty great track as well. What else would you expect from Palmer?

Evelyn Evelyn is out now on 11 records. You can stream the entire album at Bandcamp.

Evelyn Evelyn – “My Space”

I could have sworn this was a Dresden Dolls arrangement, but I can’t find it anywhere. Sports fans? Use the comments section to tell me where I’m going wrong?

Great stuff either way.

Apparently some people did not find this “side project” as amusing as others which caused Palmer to put up another blog post in which she apologized saying:

listen: i deeply apologize if anyone has been offended by our project.
there is and was absolutely no harm meant, and if harm was taken, it’s obviously worthy of discussion.

i am, as always, very very happy to see super-intelligent conversation cropping up about the nature of art, life, and appropriateness in the blog comments & in other sub-threads.
please keep it up, it is awesome. but please, please, please do refrain from calling each other names. that sucks.

Palmer and Webley still intend to release the record on March 30th and hope to tour with the album as more of a performing arts show rather than a concert.

What’s my point of view you ask?

Amanda Palmer has built an audience upon grandiose (and possibly offending) stage shows. But one thing is for sure, whether you’re offended or not you must admit that she is intriguing to watch and always has something else up her corset. The farcical story that Palmer and Webley wrote about the sisters Evelyn was so detailed and intricate that it was hard not to believe. But the adding of information concerning being molested and raped (now edited out of the original blog post) made the story even more believable but made the whole thing a little less fun when it was revealed that the story was actually a farce.

Art often times can skirt a fine line between beauty/creativity and offensive, where that line falls is completely up to the observer. For me personally I believe that the story being sold was outrageously believable that the extra details of molestation and rape were not needed. The other thing is that Palmer states that the twins “are EXTREMELY protective about their privacy.” and what could be more private than the experience of being molested?

It’s hard to say whether the “joke” would have been taken any better had it played out in full and at the twins first concert Palmer and Webley appeared on stage in a dress sewn together or if Palmer would have received the same backlash that she is dealing with now. I suspect that regardless of how the truth came to light there would have been some repercussions for Palmer to face.

Of course there is nothing funny about the fictional experiences that the “twins” faced growing up and I definitely don’t believe that Palmer intended for them to be taken as a joke but as a way to make her story more believable. Webley even said in a report to Spinner that “I had misgivings about that blog that was posted that I didn’t voice because I felt, ‘Well, that’s Amanda’s blog — that’s her thing,’”. This is definitely one of those times where someone working with the project should have spoken up and said “Maybe these little details aren’t needed.”

It is a shame though that such a fantastic idea and such a build up to a release and stage show has had to be ruined like this. Even though I don’t think that anyone was completely duped by the story it was a great way for Palmer to turn some heads and get some excitement back in a oft times boring music industry.

Your thoughts?

I got an email yesterday with a header that I had to read a couple of times to make sure that I was getting the message correctly. The email read “Ladies and Gentlemen! Critics and hipsters! We are proud to introduce ‘Evelyn Evelyn‘ – the world’s only conjoined-twin singer-songwriter duo.” I’ll give you a second to re-read that for yourself before I continue.

Eva and Lyn (hence Evelyn) Neville are twins joined at the hip. The duo share three legs, two arms, three lungs, two hearts and one liver. Not much is known about their early life other than they were born in western Kansas and that their mother died during labor. From there the two (or one) fell off the map until 1996 when they started touring with Dillard and Fullerton’s Traveling Circus.

It was here that the “Evelyn” sisters developed their love of song and performance.

Unsatisfied with the grind of circus life, at the age of nineteen the twins decided to explore a solo career.  It was then that they were discovered by Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley, who heard the twins’ music on MySpace.  Webley and Palmer encouraged the twins and offered to help them record a proper album.

I’ll have to admit that I’m still not totally convince that this is a real act or a stunt by Palmer. There are no pictures or YouTube clips that show the twins. All the pictures that you find, if you do a search, are of Palmer – one is a picture of her “conjoined” with another artist playing a song (all of which sound like Palmer doing all the singing) and all the YouTube clips are of Palmer and Jason Webley “covering” an Evelyn Evelyn song. So until a photo, video or concert tickets make it my way I’m going to take this one with a grain of salt.