The Talk of Creatures

This was my sixth Residents album.  I bought it at the same time as Our Finest Flowers, but listened to the other first because this one clearly needed my undivided attention for the full duration.

Historical note: I ordered these two CDs through a music store in the mall.  I went in and saw that a friend I knew from my previous high school (I had moved and changed schools) worked there.  He came up to me and in an affected customer service voice asked "how may I help you, sir?" I asked "where do you keep the Residents records?" because I like questions that don't have good answers.  He said "our boss won't let us stock them, but I can special order some for you." OMG he was a Rz fan too and I didn't know!  I had only really gotten into them during the summer between schools, so my only guess is that he considered them his secret shame or something, and that's why they hadn't come up in conversation (for my part, I didn't know they were real - which in a way was a far advanced opinion of the group, but not really, and not helpful at the time).  Moral of the story: it pays to let your freak flag fly.

This is of course the first experiment with the potato chips model the Rz would later utilize at grander scale with Freak Show.  They did the album, soundtrack, and singles... and if I'm not mistaken they were already talking up a film or theatrical version at the time.  I wasn't too familiar with "Double Shot of My Baby's Love" and really only knew the Rz version, so...  funny story one day I'm in the car with my mom and a song comes on the radio and I say "haha this sounds like Double Shot" and my mom was all "well duh, it is."  Moral of that story: your mom knows stuff.

I was immediately taken by the rhythm and rhyme scheme of the album (to this day it still pleases my inner poet). Being both poetry and a clear narrative, I find myself easily being swayed to one side or the other - meaning that I can be listening to the story and then get caught up in just the sound of it, and vice versa.  To that end, I still find things that seem new to me, even though I've heard this album countless times in the past two decades.

Musically of course it's wildly different from other Rz albums.   My experience to this point had been Not Available, Commercial Album, Meet The Residents, Third Reich 'n' Roll, and Our Finest Flowers.  I was under the impression at the time that "Residents" was just an umbrella name, and each album was created by a different set of individuals.  Again, so close to the truth but not enough to take credit; the best I can do is point back as an old man and say "hey, look how that kid almost gets it."

So that's pretty much all I have to say right about this.  I'm not really into sorting out deeper meaning, or trying to explain exactly why I like things.  If you ask for my top Rz albums I will immediately say Not Available and God in Three Persons – I think the similarities are obvious from an emotional standpoint but I'd be hard pressed to find concrete elements to point at.