They always did live in an alternate reality, the dear old RESIDENTS. Of course, you've gotta hand it to them: they've been in and out of this slimy biz for thirty-odd years and still no sod knows who they are, while their records themselves are quite probably the last word in enigma.
So, naturally, the idea of the San Francisco art terrorists turning in what they called their "Commercial Album" was hardly in line with what the radio were playing in 1980 when this was initially unleashed (and still aren't for that matter). Indeed, the album's 'concept' was the band's attempt at redefining the Top 40 format in The Residents' image and adhering to the five following guidelines:
1) Pop music is mostly a repetition of two types of musical and lyrical phrases, the verse and the chorus.
2) These elements usually repeat three times in a three minute pop song.
3) Eliminate the excess and a pop song is only one minute long.
4) One minute is also the length of most commercials, and therefore their corresponding jingles.
5) Jingles are the folk music of America.
And, yeah, if you approach "Commercial Album" with these rules in mind, then it's a success, as the album features 40 songs/thumbnails all of which are exactly one minute in duration, thus ensuring that even if you begin to despise certain tracks then their sheer brevity ensures you move along before the rot sets in. Hey c'mon, everything's relative: the Residents' previous album was "Eskimo" - an album where they recorded eskimos in their natural environment. You can imagine the FM stations were wetting their pants back in the day, huh?
But all that said, whether you'd really want to sit through "Commercial Album" for pleasure on a regular basis 25 years on is debatable at best. Sonically, it's a strange, synthbound beast, mostly built around belchy, pulsing Devo-esque keyboards and weird, sometimes infantile helium-style vocals. In terms of juvenile glee, it's certainly influenced the weird underground likes of The Happy Flowers, while - musically at least - it's not a million miles from the kind of things Stephin Merritt has since turned in with The Magnetic Fields. Though The Rresidents lack the urbane songwriting skills, obviously.
And bits of it are alright, actually. Tracks like the oddball pulsing of "Perfect Love" ("the only perfect love is one that gets away") and the beatier'n'ominous "Suburban Bathers" - which might or might not be addressing suicide - are within lobbing distance of pop, albeit in a vacant form, while the warped carnival atmosphere of "Love Leaks Out" is intriguing; "In Between Dreams" is pioneering in a proto-ambient kinda way and the album winds up with two cool tracks in "The Coming Of The Crow" and "When We Were Young". The former is about as close as The Residents get to a full-band, all-out rock track though with a typically brooding undercurrent, while the deceptively pretty "When We Were Young" is quite probably the prettiest thing here and a nice postscript.
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Such borderline art conceits invariably try this writer's patience after a while, though, and ultimately "Commercial Album" falls foul of what can only be described as 'minimal farting around' in more places than are welcome. Indeed, a brace of tracks have you reaching for the skip button in a frenzy, not least the dribbly synths of "Japanese Watercolour", the peurile whimsy of "Secrets" and the positively deranged "Simple Song". Altogether now: "We are simple, you are simple, life is simple too." Yeah, right lads. Now piss off, eh?
Helpfully, this expanded re-issue comes with a handy DVD featuring no less than 56 brief videos The Residents made for these tracks and more. Actually, in many ways their strange, subliminal music makes more sense with the disturbingly effective visuals and if you want to make a convincing case for The Residents as innovators, then it's important to remember that these films were cut in a creative frenzy just as the Eighties were dawning and several years before it was the norm for 'rock' artists to make the obligatory accompanying video for their latest single. In this sense - like labelmates and equally truculent stars Cabaret Voltaire - The Residents deserve their footnote in history.
But, 25 years after "Commercial Album" was released, The Residents remain a left-field thorn in the side who have the comfort of a cult following, but little to show in the unit-shifting sense of this album's title. As much as I can admire The Residents from afar, a truly subversive group would have followed through with an album that hits you with singalong pop that sells in droves, and in the sense "Commercial Album" fails every time. It hides behind its' squiffy, mental ward synths rather than going the whole hog into chartbound pop and thus still sounds like a cop out.
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