Eye was first entranced by The Residents (though eye knew of them) when a “one minute movie” was shown on The Old Grey Whistle Test to promote their Commercial Album, a collection of 40 one-minute songs. The idea in itself was appealling, the video even more so. It tapped into a strangeness that resided in myself, and since then eye’ve always felt a distant comfort that in an industry based on fame and personality, The Residents are still out there — obscure; oblique; anonymous and the antithesis of what a record company craves.
Having said that, eye’ve not always found their music accessible and often a little too lost in it’s own twisted world.
What drew me back to investigate their most recent offerings is anybody’s guess, but I’m glad eye did as “Demons Dance Alone” is a dark melodic treat. It’s still imbued with their trademark oddness but it’s instantly inviting, and comes across as a cohesive whole held together by one or two melancholic recurring themes.
It’s even what some people would call commercial and catchy, but to The Residents, I imagine such associations are irrelevant. From their perspective it’s just another hue from an infinitely expanding pallette to be daubed onto their ever-growing body of work, now 30 years in the making.
Either way it’s a fine listenable album, rich in emotion; pathos and an indiscernable zone that could be black humour, genuine melancholy or anywhere inbetween.