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THE REVIEW
The Residents are a group of intellectual freaks who, in the first half of the '70s, proposed a distorted and fundamentally "WRONG" version of everything they love (from Faust's krautrock to Beatles and Rolling Stones melodies to Stockhausen's avant-garde approach, and so on...) with little technique, zero means, lots of acids, and "the theory of obscurity" (that is, never revealing their identities, hiding under thousands of pseudonyms) as their weapon.
A weapon that proves successful, since their cult and their label (Ralph Records) become a cult worldwide, and the band acquires money, state-of-the-art equipment, compositional confidence, and a clearly recognizable image (four eyeballs in tuxedos) that becomes part of pop culture made in USA. What they always have, however, is the audacity, the desire to experiment, to derail a train full of stacked glasses one on top of the other to see what happens.
They buy advertising space on various radio stations, and during the commercial, some songs from strange products are played... otherworldly, agitated, and filled with discomfort music (a strange imprint for "a group that jokes", from this seminal 1980, is to create sad, disjointed melodies, yet always of melancholic craftsmanship) with lyrics talking about an "Eastern Woman," a "Picnic Boy"... strange advertisements... strange products, which are not found anywhere... yet, they last as long as a spot...
1980 opens like this, launching in an insolent and unexpected way one of their masterpieces, the "Commercial Album."
40 songs of a minute or slightly more each, in which themes like mental, couple, physical malaise, the afterlife, the supernatural are dissected, and in which the music scrupulously follows a scheme devised by the Residents of the structure of a song meant to be used in commercials.
The four American eyeballs unleash a domestic hell made of cold synths, otherworldly voices, various kinds of percussion, nervous electric guitars and offering us a grin that is cynical and mocking like never before in this case.
Personally one of their best outputs, we will still find restless albums like this "Commercial Album" further on (just think of "Gingerbread Man" for example, another case of a concept that's not at all cheerful despite the animations or the gingerbread man...) - but from this album, the Residents really begin to stop derailing trains and observe without doing anything, they've taken enough notes up until now in this regard, and from here they will make them pay off.
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Summary by Bot
The review praises The Residents’ 1980 'The Commercial Album' as a daring avant-garde masterpiece consisting of 40 one-minute tracks. It highlights the band’s experimental nature, their 'theory of obscurity,' and their unique ability to merge melancholic craftsmanship with cynical humor. The album’s concept, imitating commercials, explores dark themes with cold synths and unusual instrumentation. The reviewer sees it as one of The Residents’ best outputs, marking a transition in their artistic approach.Tracklist Lyrics Videos
02 Perfect Love (01:03)
03 Picnic Boy (01:02)
06 Japanese Watercolor (01:03)
07 Secrets (01:03)
10 My Second Wife (01:03)
11 Floyd (01:03)
17 Medicine Man (01:03)
20 The Simple Song (01:02)
24 Phantom (01:03)
28 Handful of Desire (01:03)
30 Love Is... (01:03)
34 Nice Old Man (01:03)
37 In Between Dreams (01:03)
39 The Coming of the Crow (01:03)
40 When We Were Young (01:13)
42 And I Was Alone (01:04)
44 We're a Happy Family (01:11)
46 Boy in Love (02:56)
49 This Is a Man's Man's Man's World (03:44)
The Residents
The Residents are an American avant-garde/experimental music group known for anonymity (often associated with eyeball masks), a self-mythologized “Theory of Obscurity,” and deconstructive parodies of popular music and American culture through sound collage and treated voices.16 Reviews
