DUCK STAB/BUSTER & GLEN
Album
| DUCK STAB: Lizard Lady Semolina Birthday Boy Weight-Lifting Lulu Krafty Cheese Hello Skinny The Electrocutioner |
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The Residents originally released Duck Stab as an EP in 1977. It sold so fast, and so well (for them), that they quickly made an album by coupling Duck Stab with another EP, the then-unreleased Buster & Glen. Taken together, they made a collection of "modern-day nursery rhymes"—not to mention the group's best-selling release.
Filmmaker Graeme Whifler took the cover photograph, beginning a long and fruitful collaboration with the Residents that continued with his video for "Hello Skinny" (now on permanent display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York).
RATING: 9
Stark, this one. Stark, and dark. And when it's not dark, it's sinister; and when it's neither dark nor sinister, it's ominous. Wow, cool, I'm starting to sound like the Residents!
Oh. Um...ahem. Anyway.
It took me years to appreciate this album. I thought it was too pared-down and almost-coming-close-to-being-vaguely-straightforward to compare to their other 70s work. It was finally the "Hello Skinny" video that made me realize: man, all of these songs are great! In fact, if you ignore all the other things that go into a Residents album and just look at the songs themselves, the group has never bested Duck Stab.
The lyrics, as usual, make little-to-no-sense, but—get this!—YOU CAN TELL WHAT THEY ARE! Yep, gone is the recorded-in-our-foyer production, replaced with crisp, clear sound, thanks largely to the spare arrangements. Now I do miss the exotic layers of Fingerprince and Not Available, but on close inspection Duck Stab/Buster & Glen's arrangements are just as avant-garde. Listen to how they pervert the blues on "Elvis and his Boss!"
The best part of the album is the Buster & Glen side. While every song is excellent, "Weight-Lifting Lulu" and "Hello Skinny" are especially high on the Best Residents Song Ever chart. But "Constantinople," "Sinister Exaggerator," and "Bach Is Dead" aren't slouches either...oh, who'm I kidding? The whole thing is awesome!
Oh, one more thing. The lyrics are still meaningless, but the "modern-day nursery rhyme" angle makes for some terrific imagery. Dig: "Skinny was born in a bathtub, and grew so incredibly thin/that even the end of an eyedropper sucked him in." Or: "Yes, mournful is the melody that echoes in their heads,/without a beat they march along, believing Bach is dead." Cool, huh?
Okay, let's go back to that "whole thing is awesome" bit, and end there, shall we?