FINGERPRINCE
Album
| You yesyesyes |
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Part One |
The Residents had planned to execute the world's first three-sided album, which would be entitled Tourniquet of Roses. This eventually became the two-sided Fingerprince and its companion EP, Babyfingers; the reason for the revision remains unclear. Four reasons are generally offered as possibilities: 1) The Residents were beaten to the three-sided punch by Monty Python's Matching Tie and Handkerchief; 2) They couldn't figure out how to make a three-sided album; 3) Ralph Records insisted on the change; 4) The Residents never planned a 3-sided album at all, but simply recorded too many songs for one LP. The world may never know.
Fingerprince's centerpiece, "Six Things To A Cycle," is the abridged score to a never-performed ballet commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
It is the first Residents recording under the jurisdiction of their present management, the Cryptic Corporation.
Finally, it should be noted that every American CD printing of Fingerprince actually contains the restored track listing of Tourniquet of Roses, which sequences the Babyfingers EP in between "Tourniquet of Roses" (the song) and "Six Things to A Cycle."
RATING: 8
Three-sided album? Six-movement ballet? Fingerprince is either pretentious as Hell or ambitious as Hell. Or both. Well, I cast my vote for "ambitious as Hell," partly because I'd feel like an idiot using the word pretentious about artists as openly silly as the Residents. But also because it's quite successful: I don't really know how the overall album was intended, but Fingerprince ends up as a pretty comprehensive summary of their early musical approach and ideas. The hooky melodies buried underneath noise ("You yesyesyes"); the primitive plunks ("Godsong"); the thought-provoking irreverence ("Godsong" again); the almost-somberness ("Home Age Conversation"); the oddly pretty ("March de la Winni") and the just plain pretty ("You yesyesyes Again")—all here.
But wait! You also get exotic and super-cool instrumentation: Bells, tympani, gamelan gongs, violins, and warehouses full of percussion and horns. You get an honest-to-goodness march in "Tourniquet of Roses," and of course the stately-but-odd ballet "Six Things to a Cycle," essentially a long string of permutations of one rhythmic pattern...even a vocal one that manages to capture the accents and dynamics in two syllables. It's fantastic, I tell you, because it keeps changing without ever changing! THAT's ambition, and it makes the album point toward the Residents' future with its soundscaping ideas and structure. (I could also point out how much "Home Age Conversation" reminds me of "Hard and Tenderly" from God in Three Persons...but I won't.) Brilliant!
So why only an 8? Well, while all the songs are great, there's no organizing concept to them—not that the Residents are required to make concept albums, mind you, but it is what they're best at. So Fingerprince sounds kind of slapdash—like "'Six Things to a Cycle' plus eight other songs"—and two bookend versions of "You yesyesyes" can't hide it. Still, that's a relatively middling complaint, and this 8 is a high 8. It's just a notch or two down from the albums around it, that's all.
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