The Residents – Dr Dark Review – February 2025 by Punk77
A new Residents album is always an interesting affair. Their long-standing anonymity and use of the Cryptic Corp to represent them (or is them) is always provoking, not least through their trademark use of almost contrary musical, visual and storytelling styles and approaches.
Dr Dark’s (Cherry Red) concept is a pairing of two events that gestated over a long time period in the San Franciso collective’s minds, but emerged with numerous twists and story embellishments.
In December 1985, Raymond Belknap (18) and James Vance (20), after a long alcohol and drug session, made a suicide pact to kill themselves with a shotgun. Belknap succeeded, but Vance failed and was left horrifically disfigured. He died three years later.
The band Judas Priest was eventually taken to court with the parents claiming that there were subliminal suicide messages in the music that made the men do what they did. The band made a point of testifying in person at the proceedings, pointing out that if they wanted to use subliminal messages in their music it would be to tell the kids to buy more records. The story is told (still above) in the Dream Deceivers Documentary easily searchable on YouTube.
The other story is of Jack Korkovian aka Dr Death whose parents had fled from the Armenian massacre and who assisted some 130 allegedly terminally ill patients to die. Korkovian was also a multi-media artist creating paintings and music of a very dark nature.
The Cherry Red PR says in typical PR hyperbole.
Veering between blissed out electronica, dark, brooding soundscapes and balls-to-the-wall industrial metal, and tackling familiar, twisted Residents fascinations – death, sex, love, loss, identity and planes of existence beyond the immediate – this new album sees a reinvigorated, new look Residents venture into places few artists are willing to go, accompanied by familiar guests and collaborators
In fact, it’s a lush, beautifully produced piece of work full of contrary images and sounds. It has a suitably unsettling cover, apparently produced by AI by Homer, that’s as ugly as the inside is beautiful. No other images are supplied for the record.
It feels like it’s a production such as a play or an opera and indeed it comes with a libretto and the disc is split into 3 acts.
Yes there are a couple of more metal/industrial sounding songs (Metal Madness) around the two suicidal metallers but they are arguably the less interesting ones. The music and vocals (at half speed sounding drugged or slightly speeded up like the MeninBlack Stranglers voices ) is a crazy mash-up of almost musical show tunes, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra backing that makes it like a requiem with melancholic strings (have you ever heard a happy cello?) all cut through like a stick of rock with the trademark Residents dark dark humour and story invention. At times it almost feels like a morphine haze that Vance/Mark was under for his horrific operations that turned him into a modern-day elephant man. The orchestra arrangement is by Edward Outwater BTW who is a big Residents fan.
It’s also very long at a good 75 minutes, so the maximum a CD can take I believe. It’s easy but uneasy listening- I listened through the whole CD on a car journey and it was rewarding and moving but exhausting – lots of sections of great beauty.
It’s hard to pick out individual songs because it’s an all-or-nothing experience. There are real no stand-out tracks (as in singles) for the Spotify generation to cherry-pick. Each one needs to stand with its brother and sisters in its sequence but some songs are genuinely moving like She Was Never Lovelier & Remembering Mother. The latter songs are Dr Dark’s, who himself has a tragic past.
It’s also hard not to think about assisted dying and death. Most of us who listen to this will be of a certain age and seeing friends and family and musicians we loved start to pass away. We may even have our own serious illnesses known or unknown.
It’s also bittersweet for The Residents as well, as it’s highly likely that one or some of their number will or have passed away. Homer Flynn in the Punk77 interview mentioned that his friend from the sixties and fellow Cryptic Corp (or they both have also been part of The Residents) Hardy Fox (right – picture by Homer Flynn) died from assisted suicide himself, choosing when to die; and whether intentional or not, some of the tracks sound like a goodbye like the moving ensemble finale Take Me To The River that sounds like the final journey.
The Residents hope is that someone will want to stage it as a show. Now that would be something!
But maybe death is nothing more than a warm feeling, after a lifetime of whatever misery we choose to embrace, suggesting that nothing is quite so satisfying as one more dip into a lovely river, endlessly flowing into forever. Maybe it is possible to die happily ever after…….” – The Residents
After all this seriousness what would be the most appropriate free gift to come with the record? Of course… a Residents beermat and 2 different ones depending on whether you’ve bought the LP or CD. You gotta love The Residents’ sense of humour!
Multiple formats are available to buy here at Cherry Red
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