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Time has sort of passed the Residents by. Caught between their '80s glory days and the present golden age of electronic experimentalism (which has seen everything from radical offshoots of drum 'n' bass to modern comp-inspired noise rock flourish), the Residents released their latest album, Demons Dance Alone on their 30th Anniversary with typical mystery and atypical indifference. Not much has changed since their last album (1998's Wormwood) -- well, except the world, something that the Residents comment on here with a collection of sometimes goofy, sometimes touching songs. Stylistically, though, the Residents are uncrackably stone-like. Perhaps they've taken the occasion of this anniversary to look back rather than look forward. I dunno.
Which isn't quite to say that this is a bad album. It's just anachronistic - more like a tape found in the vaults and released two decades late out of almost anthropological interest; an avant pop / jazz experiment that would be at home among your old Laurie Anderson and Art of Noise albums. Demons is still imminently listenable -- its bouncing rhythms, absurdist lyrics and puckered lip vocals give it the ambience of a soundtrack to a children's film as directed by David Lynch; charming, sweet at its core, but watch out for the uncomfortable close-up of a mutilated breast or shadow-steeped machine part.
That sweet core manifests itself on tracks like "The Weatherman" where an anonymous female vocalist unburdens herself with a pure, soppy sentiment that's heartbreakingly folksy. And given that the album, according to the spare press release that accompanies it, was "written for the most part in the days following September 11," this countrified sorrow feels just about right; it's problematic for an album produced by nameless, faceless musicians to try and connect emotionally with an audience. That problems is resolved when anonymity and emotion are contextualized by circumstance to make a social statement - we don't need to know the victims of September 11 to express our sorrow at their pain, and they don't need to know us for an empathetic bond to form. Demons may dance alone, but but the rest of us will all dance together.
The quotes from Plutarch ("When Bob was asked whether he held his tongue because he was a fool or for want of words, he replied, 'A fool never holds his tongue'") and Robert Graves (a gloomy yet wry stanza about the "Elemental Cow") that dot the liner notes (and accompanying press release - albeit with no further explication), combined with the division of the tracks into segments named after the stages of grief ("Loss," "Denial") appear to lend even more gravity to the album. That's a misdirection. There's a goofy charm running throughout the album -- the Residents' sense of humor bubbling beneath the surface, and breaking through on tracks like, "Micky Macaroni" and "Make Me Moo." One would be hard pressed to call this album grief-stricken. There is grieving here -- but also plenty of grinning, and ultimately it's this ability to mix the absurd with the all-too-real that makes Demons a winner, in spite of its dusty stylism.
Sean Flinn | September 12, 2002
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