THE RESIDENTS

Double CD ‘pREServed’ versions of landmark albums offer short’n’sweet vs WTF?

Recorded in 1978, Eskimo is one of the Residents’ earliest concept albums, a supposed examination of the life and culture of the people of the American Northwest. What you actually get is a series of bleak, windswept soundscapes punctuated by ersatz rituals consisting of uncanny incantations and grotesque chorales, particularly on Arctic Hysteria and A Spirit Steals A Child, which have few antecedents except perhaps Faust and early Zappa. The album reaches a more melodic conclusion on The Festival Of Death, with its shamanic drumming and tuned percussion. We all know that the Residents are a bunch of blokes who remain incognito and dress up funny, but their music on Eskimo is so resolutely out-there, that it’s hard to imagine that it was actually composed, rehearsed and demoed, but this reissue includes over an hour of works-inprogress and live versions from the album. At times this feels more of a penance than a bonus. If you think of the pleasure of aurally bathing in the blissful vocal-only mixes from the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds box set, Eskimo Acapella Suite is its complete opposite, being 21 minutes of nightmarish treated vocals including a number of rather irksome silly voices, and others that sound like they have been pitchshifted by a malfunctioning vocoder, which will be a severe test for all but the staunchest Residents fans.

The Commercial Album (1980) is a brilliant concept, comprising 40 oneminute tracks, each designed to be played three times to give a threeminute pop song. This drollery yielded a compelling mosaic of creaky, rinkydink electronics like Kraftwerk, the curious faux-fairground music of Japanese Watercolour and song fragments like Easter Woman – which reappears on the second disc in live versions from 1986 and 2015, both of which are longer and differently arranged. Among the unreleased tracks is a version of Give It To Someone Else from a 1982 rehearsal that the group get through in a mere 53 seconds.