The Residents
The Ghost Of Hope
CHERRY RED/MVD. CD/DL/LP Always crashing in different trains – a short musical history of rail disasters. Through lyrics based on contemporary newspaper accounts, mainly from late 19th century USA, all spoken and sung in a folky kind of way, these are songs describing a time when technology was progressing faster than society could regulate or control. Instrumental passages, locomotive rhythms and all manner of sound effects are used to colour in these morbidly compelling stories. These include a tale of a circus train of performers and animals destroyed – with the jovial sound of calliopes and steam organs; and a family who’d been out picking strawberries near the railway line hit by a locomotive. The group examine these incidents in a matter of fact way and the neutral, world weary singing creates a peculiar poignancy within the archness. The stand out is Elephant Vs Train, based on an incident in Malaya in 1894, an instrumental punctuated by pachydermal trumpeting.