The Great Residents Debate Continues
"You know who I really think is bad for rock and roll," Sam would say (or
words to that effect), "bands like the Residents. There's no heart
in what they do."
Being a moderate fan at the time, I knew there was something great about
the Residents, but I also completely understood his point. Few people buy a
Residents album because they heard a Residents song that immediately gripped
them. People typically begin listening to the Residents because they are
enthralled with the idea of the Residents. The idea of four individuals
(perhaps) anonymously making strange concept albums about moles and Eskimos,
while occasionally embarking on elaborate live shows while donning eyeball
masks and top hats, is an absolutely fascinating one for a certain type of
music fan. Their music can only rarely match the enduring Myth of the
Residents. Their catalogue has moments of greatness, where their relentless
anti-pop tone-poems and surreal stories hit moments of insane beauty that
owe little to rock music in general. Just as often, however, the Residents
can be weighed down by various gimmicks and experiments, and their music can
become wearingly formless: a series of willfully strange narratives
accompanied by static compositions.
Animal Lover, the latest album from the Residents, claims to be
another concept album, about the connections and differences between human
beings and their fellow animals. In fact, the album claims that the songs
are "based entirely on animal noise mating patterns generated by cicadas and
frogs". While the Residents surely are biology buffs, their enormous back
catalogue contains a soundtrack to a nature documentary, it is difficult to
decide how much this claim, or even the stated theme of the album, has to do
with the actual content of the album. The cynic in me wants to suggest that
they made the "mating patterns" claim to justify a subtle electronica
influence creeping into their synthesizer-driven sound.
There are at least traces of this theme in the work. "On the Way (to
Oklahoma)" is sung by a man who becomes a cat and "finally (becomes) sane".
The narrator, the unmistakable laconic voice of the prime Residents vocalist
(whoever he is), sings about the sensible pleasures of meat and licking
himself, which contrast with the insane needs of the consumers on "Two
Lips", a song about the tulip craze in seventeenth century Holland. Warped
by commercial pressures, the crazed chorus of buyers has pledged to sell
their homes to buy tulips. This sounds like a farcical Residents premise
except it comes straight from the record books, and the twisted troll voice
that rasps about his need for tulips (and his willingness to sell his wife
and sons) no longer sounds like over-the-top satire. The spooky "What Have
My Chickens Done Now", an oblique play with three different narrative
voices: an elderly woman, an eerie childlike voice, and a spooky chorus,
pits an elderly woman against her seemingly possessed livestock. The song
however, takes no sides about whether the woman or the chorus of sentient
chickens is morally in the right (perhaps neither are).
Still, despite their protests about the insanity of man, there is a
strange humanitarian urge on Animal Lover that serves as the
counter-argument to the Residents' supposed "lack of heart". The Residents,
at their best, do not produce sterile experimental pieces designed to repel
or inspire polite appreciation. From the beginning, their music has created
an unsettling atmosphere that plays out a range of darker emotions: fear,
dread, even pity and sadness. The strangely tuned instruments and distorted
vocals are not mere parlor tricks, they are used to express the unsettling
truth behind the world's supposed order and normalcy. "Inner Space" and
"Dead Men" stand out, amongst the seemingly craziness of the rest of the
album, as harrowing portraits of human mortality. The female narrator of
"Inner Space" recalls witnessing her father's increasing isolation and
coldness as he faced death, singing in a detached voice that suggests a
numbed pain. "Dead Men" follows soon after, as another unearthly chorus
speculates on the traits we will have after we die, concluding, starkly,
that "dead men are only in the way". It would be hard to argue that there
is no way to listen to these songs, and decide that the Residents came from
an emotionless place.
However, Sam may have a point after all. Animal Lovers' weak
points may show the Residents to be all eyeball masks and no cattle. The
Residents successfully add a needed energy into their music, maybe because
they are actually following the rhythm of frogs bumpin' uglies, as the
"close enough for rock and roll" instrumental "Mr. Bee's Bumble" and the
spooky samba of "The Whispering Boys" prove. Still, much of the album gets
reduced into slightly off-kilter new age with occasional horror show
effects. In attempting to subvert pop music in general, the Residents often
find themselves removing anything remotely interesting from their music. On
Animal Lovers, the Residents show, as always, a lot of heart and
thought in the lyrics and ideas and even in their theatrical vocal
performances, but that effort only sporadically shows up in the music
itself.
— 4 March 2005
