Don't Turn Off The Lights

Album: The Bunny Boy
Artist: The Residents
Genre: Avant-Garde
Year: 2008
Label: MVD Audio/Santa Dog

The Residents scare me. I don’t know if I can say that about any other band I have ever encountered. I probably couldn’t go to a Residents concert because I can barely sit down and listen to their records for fear of what I might hear. The singsong lyrics about being a butcher, the creepy synths and black guitars are almost too much to bear… almost. The other problem with The Residents is that they’re fascinating, in a sick and twisted way. Some people research serial killers and mysterious disappearances, I research The Residents. The fact that they’ve remained almost entirely anonymous over their 30+ year career is unsettling to me because it means that they could be anybody. If their music wasn’t so frightening this might not be so bad, but their music is scarier than any horror movie you’ve ever seen. I sometimes fear that the lyrics here come from first hand experience and not just dark imaginings.

This latest album, The Bunny Boy, is just as absurd and spine tingling as their older works, proving that these spooks haven’t run out of ideas yet. What is it about bunnies? In Donnie Darko there was a giant bunny predicting the end of the world. In David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE there was a room with three bunny-people who made off hand remarks to a laugh track. Why bunnies? Who knows, but now, thanks to Donnie Darko, Mr. Lynch and now, The Residents - bunny rabbits are ruined for me. The Bunny Boy is 19 tracks of demented psychosis and off-kilter terror tactics and I don’t know if I’ll be able to stomach a second listen. This is not because the music is bad, far from it. The Residents are very competent musicians. No, the reason I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it a second time is because I don’t want some of these images imprinted onto my brain a second time.

I wouldn’t exactly call The Residents accessible, but this release is certainly more pop-song oriented than others. The sex-clown narrative of Tweedles! Comes to mind, as well as the sound collages of Third Reich and Roll. Both of those albums are difficult listens for very different reasons. The Residents once again have managed to invert Pop-sensibilities for their own dark purposes. All the songs are short, the longest being four minutes and 42 seconds, but just because they’ve got pop song structure doesn’t mean that these are pop songs. It’s not like they’re trying very hard to disguise them either, you’re never going to hear songs like “I Killed Him” or “Boxes of Armageddon” played on even the most forward thinking radio stations. If you did, it probably means the end is nigh.

At one point in their career, on the album Duck Stab/Buster & Glen especially, there was a sort of humor about The Residents. They were kind of creepy, but they were also kind of funny. Not anymore. These days, if there is humor in The Residents delivery, it’s lost on me. I can’t listen to songs like “The Dark Man” or “Black Behind” without feeling my skin crawl. They’re trying to scare me and they’re succeeding. Be careful with this stuff. You don’t know who’s been handling it. It could be anyone. It could be me. You could be a Resident and not even know it. Now that’s creepy.