859 The Residents - Duck Stab/Buster & Glen (1978)

 859 The Residents - Duck Stab/Buster & Glen (1978)


Studio Album - Avant Garde




About the Act:

"The Residents are an American art collective best known for their avant-garde music and multimedia works". So says Wikipedia.  A group of high school friends in Shreveport Louisiana started making amateur home recordings in 1965. In 1966 they decided to travel to San Francisco to join the budding hippie movement. However, their truck broke down in San Mateo, California, so they decided to stay there. They named themselves "The Residents" after a rejection slip sent to them by Warner Bros.

Over the years they have made many Avant Garde art works of varying strangeness, including releasing around 50 albums. Who they are is a secret, they don't give interviews, and at times their work has been deliberately provocative.


About the Album:

Side 1 is Duck Stab, side 2 is Buster & Glen. Side 1 was previously released as an EP that sold well, by their standards, and so became the first side of an album. The fact that it was split into smaller tracks than previous albums helped sales.


My History with this Album:

None


Review:

So this is the second album in my list by The Residents. Describing it is an interesting prospect as it is kind of weird. It is musically, lyrically, and producionally unusual, and in most senses nonsense. The sound is quite muffled, the production uses lots of strange effects, especially on the vocals, the music is simple really, but sometimes discordant. I guess the one aspect that is quite standard is the time signatures. It's like somebody took the idea of Frank Zappa and gave it to people who would push the weirdness further, but not back it up with the musical talent and versatility of Zappa. It is deliberately very absurd, and as such it is the sort of thing that quite a few people would find not particularly pleasant to listen to. It's a one-trick pony, and that trick is being weird, but it lacks the skill of Zappa, or Gong, or others. 

Do I like it? Not really. I like it better than schmaltzy Country, foul-mouthed rap, extreme metal or plastic fluffy-pop, possibly on the grounds that it is less popular, but if I want things on the weird side, I would probably go for something with more talent.

5.8/10


Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/1H41HWYEma2varJT6XVqQb

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8kG3bjhFO69zarYzM-C1uB1oCjVTEYlL

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Stab/Buster_%26_Glen



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