On ‘Animal Lover’ we (re)discover beyond doubt that The Residents live in a strange place: a twilight world where the boundaries of art and music blur and the stuff of nightmares is a palpable presence. And these are proper nightmares: child-like and naïve but still capable of being rendered almost real by the sheer force of imagination.
A band for who the word ‘challenging’ was invented, The Residents nonetheless have managed to create and sustain a commercial presence for over 30 years without ever really having to relinquish their artistic integrity or, indeed, their identity. The people in black tie with giant eyeballs for heads return on a new label (Mute) with an album that is unlikely to be matched this year for its strangeness and a weird beauty that simultaneously compels and repulses.
On ‘Animal Lover’ our actions are being dissected and analysed by the animal kingdom and the comments of the blush-free observers make for uncomfortable listening. Despite our presence atop the food chain our desire to be something other than an animal only serves to feed our ignorance and to fuel the conflict with ourselves and with each other. Our fractured being has been defined by two sliding scales: Darwin’s theory of evolution being one and Freud’s belief that there are no such opposites as sanity and madness, just degrees of normality.
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Musically all of this translates into the realms of the nursery rhyme, skewered and stuffed uncomfortably into a disturbing musical performed by an Oriental carnival freak-show that lives with David Lynch’s Lady in The Radiator. As bizarre as this sounds – and there is much within ‘Animal Lover’ that sounds bizarre – there is nothing within that is unattainable nor strictly unlistenable. Challenging, yes, but aloof and impenetrable, no. In fact, there are passages that have soul, pathos and emotion to counter the avant-garde.
Enter their world if you dare, but don’t be too surprised if you end up staying.
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