The Residents
River of Crime, Episodes 1–5
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The eyeball knows!
Yes, the radio mystery drama has finally received the Residential treatment in the form of River of Crime, a five-episode (thus far) serial in the spirit of the 1940s, only with a decidedly 21st-century twist: The group—around for over 30 years, and famous for both their anonymity and trademark giant eyeball masks—has released each episode in the form of a paid “podcast.” In essence, they’re MP3 files available on iTunes and the Cordless Recordings Web site. Of course, by paying a little more for a “subscription,” you get album art and silk-screened CD-Rs onto which you can burn your MP3s, plus extras like episode scripts and exclusive tracks, including a lengthy River of Crime instrumental suite.
Technical aspects aside, this is everything you’d expect from The Residents—darkly humorous; unfailingly disturbing; full of oddball characters, potent imagery, and brooding, evocative atmospheres. What you might not expect is that, here, music plays a supporting role to the text.
The soundtrack is truly that—a soundtrack—serving primarily to set the tone for a highly engaging story. The familiar, frantic, Louisiana-twinged singing (or, in this case, speaking) Resident is our narrator and central character, setting up each episode in an alternately folksy, endearing and troubled fashion. The subject matter is disconcerting, even by Resident standards, running the gamut from electrocuted elephants and man-eating alligators to molesters and murderers, complete with graphic descriptions and generous helpings of adult language. But as with Humbert Humbert from Nabokov’s Lolita, we feel strangely sympathetic to our crime-addicted narrator, pitying him as his curious proclivities entrap him ever more in a work of darkness. The scriptwriting is wonderfully gripping, with the narrator turning in terrific performances throughout. The remainder of the voice acting varies in quality but never gets in the way of the potency of the stories.
Those who come at this from a more musical angle might find themselves disappointed, particularly on the heels of last year’s brilliant Animal Lover (they go so far as to tease us with a melody from that album in each episode’s opening sequence). But when taken in the way it was intended—as an updated radio-style serial drama with musical accompaniment—River of Crime makes for quite the memorable ride. Now let’s just hope The Residents don’t abandon the story before it reaches its real conclusion as they did with the Mole Trilogy. Now that would be a crime.
