The Residents
Wormwood

The quintessential Anti-Pop, avant-garde Rock and its exaggeration, electronic experimentation and concrete music, skewed orchestral arrangements and filtered voices, tape manipulation and collages outside any logic or scheme, the visual as well as sonic setup of massive theaters of the absurd, the ability to subjugate popular music and American customs to the most mocking parody up to the most paroxysmal sarcasm, distorting and deconstructing every element of the "song," or what is supposed to be such, have been the trademarks that, with unflagging consistency and independence (see the Theory of Obscurity as a quest for purity in art), "The Residents" have carried on from the early seventies to today.

What adjectives better describe them if not sinister, claustrophobic, corrosive, caustic, iconoclastic, sadistic, visionary, and simultaneously sharp and lucid?

With irony, black humor, and brutality, they desecrated Beatles, Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley, George Gershwin, James Brown, Hank Williams, Pop, Rock ‘n’ Roll, Muzak, the music industry, Rock idolatry, American ideology, massification, conformity, and consumerism that sclerotize, humiliate, debase, and alienate man. They sang the phantom epic of a spurious civilization of men and machines, postmodern and de-evolved. They exalted Eskimo civilization, going as far as having a sort of children's choir, drowned by impetuous, multiple, and icy waves of wind, sing the ditty "Coca Cola is Life." And finally, in the Year of Our Lord 1998, the Residents released their twentieth official album: "Wormwood. Curious Stories from the Bible."

It's a concept of twenty songs. They adopt the classic song format, which is already extravagant for their standards, plunging into the Old and New Testament to pull out the most atypical characters and the most scabrous situations, to depict a humanity mostly crude, petty, mean, yet profoundly and authentically human. Their stated intent is neither "to vilify, nor to glorify the Holy Text, but to humanize it." YHWH’s task was not unlike this: to humanize man (through God). In this sense, they are anything but blasphemous. The Bible undeniably portrays life in its entirety, in its true reality, not ideal, not dreamt, and therefore presents uplifting and non-uplifting situations. Thus the Residents, ultimately, want to humanize the (biblical) man through themselves.

The band born in Louisiana but based in San Francisco, endeavors to stage twenty fundamentally theatrical scenes, compressed into independent songs, distributed randomly, except for Genesis ("The Beginning") and the Apocalypse ("Revelation"), placed at opposite extremes. Besides the voice of the official vocalist, the Green Eyeball, which with customary grandiloquence is amplified, exacerbated and deformed, more with effects of pathos than caricature, there are various female performers among whom stands out with an attractive and sentimental singing style, Carla Fabrizio (a regular collaborator of ours, also instrumentalist, especially on rebab, Balinese violin, as well as collaborator of American Music Club and Red House Painters, and a member of the obscure Vudi & The Bugbears).

Heavy electronics typical of the band dominates everywhere, alienating and pursuing unresolved arrangements, on heavy, dark and solemn moods. To this high-sounding, somewhat "lofty," element, unusual funky beats are dichotomously opposed. Although synthesizers and keyboards prevail, then, there is space for incisive and penetrating drum machines, for tribal percussiveness, for guitar distortions and intermittent noise. However, the voices and verses freely inspired by the Holy Scripture, it should be noted, are always at the forefront.

The introductory notes to the lyrics, in the booklet included with the CD, commit a couple of theoretical errors, hastily dismissing the idea of creatio ex nihilo, a fundamental assumption of Judaism, Jewish mysticism, and Christian theological thought. Then falling into literalism and fundamentalism concerning the old "adage" of the 144,000 souls that, according to the Apocalypse of John, will be saved, interpreting it historically inaccurately and, consequently, uncritically. But, apart from these two "venial sins," music and lyrics hit the mark, fully. Without exception and with style.

In review.

After the lead drops of the introductory "The Beginning," it proceeds with the dramatic "Fire Fall," the song of Lot who, after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the death of his wife, was made drunk and abused by his daughters eager to conceive; the track is played on the alternation of a relaxing phase, punctuated by childish trumpets or rubbery toys, very childish, to an emphatic sequence that leads to an epic and tragic crescendo, masterfully enclosed in the verses “Fire fell from the sky. Tears fell from my eyes.”

The prophet Jeremiah is "Mr. Misery"; "Bridegroom of Blood," with Moses' stuttering, instead inaugurates the practice of circumcision, where Salome's psychotic obsession with the head of the Baptist is portrayed in the frenzied maenad dance of "How To Get A Head." In "Cain and Abel" the murderous brother despairs and burns, in succession, in envy, anger, and unbearable pain.

The soft features of Bathsheba intent on bathing, which ensnare King David and lead him to have her husband, as well as his faithful general, Uriah the Hittite, assassinated, are sung languidly in "Bathshaba Bathes," while a funky beat with irregular harmonies tells of Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dream "The Seven Ugly Cows."

The bitter reflections of Judas Iscariot, "The Hit Man," emerge in "Judas Saves" with liquid and unusually melodious arrangements, indeed, whistleable. "Spilling The Seed" naturally features Onan, who does not impregnate Tamar.

A masterpiece of melodramatic art is then "Hanging By His Hair," where David's son, Absalom, who wanted to usurp the kingdom from his father after lying with his concubines, dies in battle accidentally hanging from the branches of an oak. Here he gathers his lifeless strength in a last piercing scream, "Soon I would be dead / but I slept in his bed / with his women and said / Fuck you father," amid memorable electric guitar slashes and the grandiloquent underlining of the organ. There are vocal orientalisms and interludes of slender ethnic percussion, alongside the histrionic recitative and, only in the end, a very delicate piano among the sighs.

Angel choirs, a lively piano, and dreamlike synths tickle "I hate Heaven," where the "dark but beautiful" bride of the Song of Solomon writhes troubled and overly sensual; our heroes mock this sublime poem with blatant lowliness, going from a faithful "My lover calls my teeth an invitation to my soul" to the playful "But he does not understand the dept of my black hole."

Finally the wonderful "Burn Baby Burn," a happy rhythmic progression among joyful percussion and exalted keyboards, on the controversial theme of Jephthah's daughter's sacrifice and paternal vow, to dive into a jubilation of trumpets, bells, organ, and synthesizers. The chorus is so flashy, beautiful, and catchy it seems like a "metatheater" operation for our heroes, who disguise or denigrate themselves, pretending to be the Buggles of Trevor Horn.

If all these pieces were so paradigmatic, and not "only" suggestive, we would be facing an incomparable must. The album, at times, however, inevitably ends up being cloying. But, at least, we are facing the most representative work of the 1990s of the Californian band. Rightly replicated by a live twin titled "Roadworms."

Certainly the Bible has given birth to Milton, Shakespeare, and Bach. But even our alternative, zappa-esque, and beaferthian heroes have had their say on the matter.

And God only Knows what we’d be without Residents.