The 1981 Listening Post - The Residents - Mark of the Mole

 Reviewed by Tom Mott

Released: September 1981 The Residents Mark Of The Mole Genre: Experi-mental Allen’s Rating: 4 out of 5 Tom’s Rating: 3.66 out of 5 Highlights: The New Machine: -Idea -Construction -Failure / Reconstruction -Success Final Confrontation: -Driving The Moles Away -Don't Tread On Me -The Short War -Resolution? tl;dr version: Interesting and idiosyncratic. Much more "Dr Demento" than, say, Rip Rig + Panic or John Martyn. If you like The Residents "Eskimo" this is a similar exploration of a fictional world. Spirit's Potato Land saga springs to mind. Long Version: I have a love/hate relationship with the Residents. A friend loaned me The Commercial Album in high school. Viscerally, I didn't like it. I could never make it past track 7 or 8. Every track on that album is 1 minute long, so after 8 minutes, you've been hit with 8 different ideas--not in a Jeff Lynne 4-hooks-per-song-with-sub-hooks-within-hooks way, but more like an acid brainstorm: Here's 8 song ideas. Don't like 'em? No problem! We've got 32 more! Huzzah! But that album opened my eyes to a whole new frontier of non-mainstream, not-even-punk, music. I love The Residents for that. When I saw Devo in 1983, The Residents were seated -- in top hats, tuxes, and eyeballs -- in the second or third row. I love The Residents for that too. I saw them perform live in 2013, and they were solid. Yes, they sometimes strayed into "aren't we quirky" territory, but they put on a good show. Somewhere in between, in the hazy late-80s early-90s, I discovered their albums Eskimo and Diskomo. Eskimo is interesting. It's imaginary ethno-musicography. As an art project, it mines our collective unconscious: We all have *some* blueprint in our minds of what life in the Arctic might be like and sound like -- right? -- even if we really have no idea at all. Eskimo is an evocative mix of icy sheets of sound with distant chanting. It's a compelling listen. Is it problematic? There's an "ooga-booga ooga-booga" aspect to it that I am less comfortable with in 2021, although I think The Residents are pretty self-aware and intentional. As for this particular album, Mark of the Mole: It's a concept album -- the first in a trilogy -- with a story. Like Eskimo, it's imagined ethno-musicography, but this time it's overtly imaginary, set in the fictional world of the Moles and Chubs. A flood forces the underground-dwelling Moles to flee their home to the land of the Chubs, who subjugate them. I think it's more accessible than The Commercial Album. Is that a good thing? I think so. There are some spoken-word sections that are presumably important to the overall story, but they're buried in the mix, so they're easy to ignore. I did. Like the voice-over in Blade Runner: if you really it, something's wrong. This is a coherent album that takes you on a journey. Most of the songs on Mark of the Mole are over 7 minutes, and work well as an odd sonic landscape for going about your life (dishes, emails, etc). AllMusic tags this with these album moods: Cerebral | Eccentric | Enigmatic | Ominous | Provocative | Spooky | Quirky | Clinical | Literate | Theatrical. I don't look for music that's specifically "cerebral" "quirky" "theatrical" or (GOD FORBID) "literate." I'm fine with "quirky" and "eccentric" when it's applied externally to an outsider artist like Daniel Johnston or Moondog. I'm not as fine with artists who try to be weird for weirdness sake. That's why, even though this is worth a listen, I can't give it 4 stars. I can't shake the feeling that The Residents are giggling in the background. It's a little too art school for me.

The 1981 Listening Post - Renaldo and the Loaf - Songs for Swinging Larvae

 Renaldo and the Loaf - Songs for Swinging Larvae

#28

January 1981

Renaldo and the Loaf

Songs for Swinging Larvae

Genre: The Residents

1.5 out of 5

How is this not The Residents? Certainly nothing The Residents have ever said can be trusted, they are the Fake News of music.

There’s no secret who the lead singer is and Homer Flynn won’t admit it. The chief writer, Hardy Fox, didn’t acknowledge his contribution until just near his death.

So here is a “band” signed to Ralph Records and sounds exactly like the band that created that label.

But without the incessant percussiveness that pervaded albums like Eskimo or the mashup musical deconstruction of Third Reich N Roll what it comes closest to is the minimalism of Commercial Album. But at least that record, despite the conceit that it was pop music without ever a need to repeat a verse or even utilize a bridge, was funny and, dare I say, listenable. 

Except for “Spratt’s Medium” but I can’t tell if it’s good or I was just over exposed to it via Residents’ media. 

This is like outtakes from Duck Stab. Or Fingerprints. It’s chore to get through. Experimentation for the sake of. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/songs-for-swinging-larvae-songs-from-the-surgery/994989175

The 1980 Listening Post - The Residents - Commercial Album

 The Residents - Commercial Album

#421

by Paul Zickler

October 1980

The Residents 

Commercial Album

Genre: Avant Garde (aka Weird Music)

Allen’s Rating: 5 out of 5

Paul’s Rating: 4.5

Highlights:

Amber

Picnic Boy

Moisture

Fingertips

Secrets

The Residents are one of the many artists I first learned about from the great Dr. Demento Show. They were the eyeball head dudes, mysterious and anonymous. The Commercial Album was featured by the Doctor, since it consists of 40 one-minute songs. I wish I had been more adventurous at 15 and actually bought records like this, but instead I had to wait for eMusic, and later Spotify, to provide cheap access to unlimited “weird music.”

Make no mistake, The Residents play weird music. Even now, I sometimes have to wear headphones or keep the volume low to avoid bugging my wife or scaring the dog. I mean, it’s not Sun Ra or Pharoah Sanders or Captain Beefheart weird, but it’s weird enough to keep the uninitiated away. Or so I thought until I joined a Residents Facebook group and realized these guys have TONS of fans. I also read that Eskimo was shortlisted for a Grammy nomination, and MTV had Commercial Album videos in regular rotation in their early years. So maybe it’s not as weird as I thought?

The liner notes famously suggest playing each song three times to simulate a regular pop song, and that actually does work with some of these tunes. “Amber,” “Picnic Boy,” “Moisture,” and “Fingertips” all have one verse and one chorus and flow together pretty well, although “flow” isn’t a word I’d typically use for Residents songs. While the album title is clearly ironic, a few tracks almost qualify as commercial, including the instrumentals “When We Were Young,” “La La,” and “Japanese Watercolor,” although I can’t imagine a radio format that would embrace one-minute instrumentals. There are also some that are creepy enough to be memorable, like “Secrets,” which ends abruptly in mid-sentence, enhancing its scariness, “Nice Old Man,” which interrupts a jaunty little synth melody with jarring bell noises, and “The Talk of Creatures,” which has a mostly one-note guitar figure pulsing under an eerie vocal and feels longer than a minute because you kinda wish it would end and stop freaking you out so much.

The thing with one-minute songs is that they’re easily forgettable. According to iTunes, I’d listened to every song three to six times before writing this review, but I still have no familiarity with the majority of them. And since they’re so short, I couldn’t tell you what they’re “about,” beyond the titles. However, there’s an overall feel to the entire release that works for me. Most of it is challenging and intriguing, which is what I ask of my avant garde music. If you enjoy that slightly off kilter vibe found in the best weird music, The Residents pretty much always deliver.

https://open.spotify.com/album/6VEns9PXETPgZdZXMAZzvg?si=s9AjxNsWRBmq1Rl4gD5UPw

The 1980 Listening Post - Snakefinger - Greener Pastures

 Snakefinger - Greener Pastures

#398

October 1980

Snakefinger

Greener Pastures

Genre: Accessible Residents

4.25 out of 5

Highlights:

I Come From an Island

Trashing All the Loves of History

Snakefinger isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. And, to be honest, I’m not even sure he’s mine a lot of the time. 

How do I explain? I have a warm spot in my heart for The Residents. After the 80s they lose a lot of their mojo, yes, but there is this period of time when they are so fervent and that’s when they occasionally hung out with Philip Lithman aka Snakefinger. His contribution to Commercial Album, Tale of Two Cities and, especially, Eskimo, might b the reason that The Residents have that spot. While Title in Limbo isn’t their best, once he no longer collaborated with them they put out the execrable The Big Bubble and never really recovered. 

Perhaps Snakefinger was the secret sauce all along. 

So, as I often have said, if you like this stuff, this is the stuff you like and you will probably like this stuff. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/greener-postures/1362750836

The 1980 Listening Post - Fred Frith - Gravity

Fred Frith - Gravity

#120

1980 Housekeeping

Fred Frith

Gravity

Genre: Experimental

4.25 out of 5

Highlights:

Spring Any Day Now

Hand of the Juggler

Requisite 80s cover: “Dancing in the Street”. Hey, The Residents did Satisfaction, so this one makes sense, even though Jagger didn’t cover it for a few years after Fred basically did a Residents dance all over it. 

What came first, the Residents or the Frith? 

I mean, it’s sort of obvious that they are virtually interchangeable, yes? No? Frith collaborated with the Residents in the 70s and I am sure contributed to the sounds on their best records, Eskimo and Mark of the Mole. Maybe even the brilliant Commercial Album.

But, this is not that. This is wildly accessible. It’s meditations and examinations of dance music through experimental filter. The Residents would eschew this entirely, it wouldn’t fit into their idiom. Surely, there are touches of that experimentation all over this thing but, it’s not off putting. It’s challenging, yes, but stuff like should be. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/gravity/74349284

The 1985 Listening Post - The Residents - The Big Bubble

The Residents - The Big Bubble

#400/1036

October 24 1985

The Residents

The Big Bubble

Genre: Post-everything

1.75 out of 5

I’ve told this before but one of my favorite gags is anytime something is the “fourth in a trilogy”. 

Hitchhikers guide introduced that joke to me and I was admonished by my editor at a New York University film paper for reviewing Rocky IV as “the fourth part of the Rocky trilogy.”

Her cut it out cuz…well…whatever, Marcus Raboy. 

This is the 4th part of The Mole Trilogy. To be honest, I really don’t know what’s happening in that saga. All I do know is that the first two parts were quite something, sonically. Not as great as Eskimo but pretty damned good. The 3rd part never materialized and this is supposed to be a rock band made up of Zenkenites who are hybrids of Moles and Chubs…and…I don’t know. 

The closest they get to either of those previous records is the closer “Kula Bocca Says So”. 

This is one of those times that the band just loses me. And this is it for a few years for them. They’ll release some live stuff but, the previous tours had knocked them around and this was a pretty bad album. We’ll catch up with them again in 1988.

https://music.apple.com/us/album/big-bubble/1204947514

The 1983 Listening Post - The Residents & Renaldo and the Loaf - Title in Limbo

The Residents & Renaldo and the Loaf - Title in Limbo

#221
1983 Housekeeping
The Residents and Renaldo and the Loaf
Title in Limbo
2.75 out of 5

Did Angelo Badalamenti listen to “Crashing” before composing for David Lynch? The echoes are remarkable.
This is the first real letdown for me from these guys.
It sounds like what it is: an attempt to generate cash by creating product. And it falls flat.
All too often The Residents sounds like a soundtrack in search of a theatrical piece to accompany. This is probably the best example of that but also of how turgid such a show could be.