The eyeballed-ones recent foray into storytelling and radio plays has been patchy to say the least. Tweedles was disappointing and the Timmy YouTube viral videos frequently seemed to be lacking something. However, it has never been written anywhere that The Residents had to placate their audience all the time (in fact, if anything should be written it is that The Residents should not placate any of their audience any of the time). That being said, this latest album seems to work far better than its predecessors as it melds a number of musical (and other) styles in that inimitable Residential fashion.
Continuing their storytelling mode, The Residents recreate the tale of The Sandman as written by E.T.A. Hoffman. This audio play deals with paranoia, childhood trauma and the shadow at the edge of the night that pushes the fragile over the edge. I must admit the story itself is somewhat lacking but this is a strong album, indeed stronger than their more recent broadcasts. And while the acting may be hammy, the almost kitsch delivery of the lines fits with the style of the production. The Residents have always combined the absurd with the unsettling and The Voice of Midnight is in this regard no different to the rest of their back catalogue. In the opening scene, the action goes wildly from screamed phone conversations to a soliloquy resembling something from The Tiger Lillies' canon, all falsetto vocals and the melancholy music of a deserted theare.
The rest of the album steers mostly clear of songs and instead sticks to dialogue with atmospheric music and sounds. Much of the time it is a nice combination of Angelo Badalamenti style ambience, weird noises, and cheap sounding keyboards typical of The Residents. When the dialogue is sung rather than spoke, The Voice of Midnight sounds like some demented opera which suits the melodramatic plot down to the ground. I wish they made the characters sing all the time as these moments are definitely the best and oddly the most convincing in terms of acting.
I cannot pretend that The Voice of Midnight will keep me listening over and over again due to the complexity of the plot or any layering of meanings in the dialogue. Instead it is the power of the mood evoked that will give this album a long shelf life. It is one of the more accessible sounding albums that The Residents have released but retains the weirdness that makes them so compelling. It will be interesting to see if they continue to do these audio plays or whether they will change the stage and combine their multimedia experiments with their dramatic flair? Or of course decide that it is time for something completely different. I feel The Voice of Midnight could act as a new springboard for another concept concert tour, one can only hope.
samples (WARNING: May give away plot details):
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