134. Moisture

The Residents: Commercial Album (Ralph, 1980);
composed by ? ? ? ?

The Residents acquired their avant-ish cachet as much for their Pynchonesque refusal to identify their individual members as for their music which usefully served to deflect attention from both. The music was still the point, but the genial hostility of the presentation – their “management” gave interviews speaking about the group in the third person in voices nonetheless recognizable from the records – gave the musical usages a little more breathing room than they might otherwise have. Others may disagree about their later theatrical incarnations, but I think this album was their apotheosis, conceptually: an album of forty tracks each lasting exactly one minute, yet each making an impression. None have much of a beat; most of the instrumentation is rudimentary synths with voices mewing microtonal melodies almost-tonal-but-not on top. The effect is not so much distortion as decay: as if this technologically oriented music had been fashioned from biomatter that was audibly decomposing - as if DEVO were Weird Al Yankovic. On this emblematic track, two verses are separated by a jazzish Fred Frith guitar solo. In the first, a “stranger” is observed perspiring a lot. In the second, they find a snail in her purse after she dies. Time passes.

Note: Secular essays about individual songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day through Advant and at least semi-regularly until Donald goes away.