James Arden checks out the garage rockers latest album.
The Christian rock band from Brighton bring religion to the masses.
Recipe for modern R'n'B album: liberal helpings of guest rappers and an overdose of sexual euphemisms.
The Residents are described as an 'art concept multimedia pop group' - a description which can't help but induces scepticism from the off. I was expecting 25 minute organ solos, technically impressive but artless, unengaging guitar playing wankery and the other fripperies of prog. I was wrong. This is worse than that.
The Voice of Midnight is a musical theatre adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffman's short story Der Sandmann (some of you might recognise the story from Freud's Uncanny). The album is supposedly a commentary on the conflict between the age of reason and the romantic era, although how anyone came to this conclusion is beyond me. Vocals are delivered by an androgynously voiced person, muttering psychotically over a backing track that tries so hard to sound ground breaking that it actually comes out sounding rather dated, like an Emerson, Lake and Palmer B-side.
The tracks are full of slow, burning synth parts and fuzzy guitars playing in angular, syncopated blasts in an attempt to sound intense and exciting. It is in fact tedious, so unimaginative and predictable that listening to it actually makes you seeth with anger that something this crap could have an audience.
The lyrics (in the loosest sense) are so bad they make my ears weep. A stand out line, but of a by no means unusual style for he album is this:
"you want to have his demon babies their owl beaks going snap, snap, snap! Snap, snap, snap!"
If done with a sense of humour, lines like this can work. Unfortunately, The Residents are so self important they make the uber egos of U2 seem like Half Man Half Biscuit. Since their formation in the 1960's, they have never had a photo taken or given an interview, choosing instead to speak through a spokesgroup known as The Cryptic Corporation. Apparently, they do this to avoid being beaten up in the streets by proper music fans. Just a rumour, but probably true.
Maybe I'm missing something here? The bloke from The Times described these guys as 'Rock's ultimate mystery men' and The Mirror was so complimentary that one can't help but question the reviewer's true identity. Perhaps the highly secretive Residents are a band of music journalists moonlighting as a rock band, reviewing their own work in an attempt to dupe people into buying their album? Perhaps The Mirror's chief reviewer is the lead singer's mum... We'll never know, but I do know that this is shit, and not even in a funny way.
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