Though the Residents are among the most recognizable figures in the world of avant-garde pop music, they rarely push compositional or sonic envelopes, except superficially (their landmark Eskimo being a notable exception). Rather, their experiments are more commonly conceptual or theatrical pieces that pose forceful challenges to listeners’ appetites for the weird and disturbing. The Residents’ best work is consumable, if that is the right word, as both an aesthetic experience and an object of reflection.
In this vein, Tweedles is a concept album crossed with a radio play. Its centerpiece is the apologia of the title character, a vicious nihilist whose existence consists of a string of sexual conquests. Tweedles is a character of remarkable depth. His voice is defensively self-satisfied (“I mean, I don’t HAVE any values…I just AM.”) and revoltingly onanistic (“There’s no better feeling than a hard-on…it’s your gun”). Yet, it is also contemplative (“Somehow, I always see the stop sign first. Why is it, I wonder?”) and even, occasionally, vulnerable (“she began to blubber like a baby…I think about her all the time”). Tweedles has a strange humility that makes his seductive power all the more believable, and as if his realism was not disquieting enough by itself, the Residents have put this rapacious voice into that perennial symbol of amusement and terror, a clown — a failed clown, as he reveals. The narration of this Casanova (Bozo-nova?) is accompanied and punctuated by the Residents’ characteristic dark collage of electronic, classical and rock music and their equally characteristic Greek-chorus doggerel verse. The overall effect of Tweedles, like that of its namesake character, is both distressing and intriguing, difficult to endure — but even more difficult to forget.
This article appears in Nov 23-29, 2006.