FREAK SHOW
Album
| EVERYONE Comes
to the Freak Show |
 |
The Residents had specifically refused to wear their eyeball and skull costumes on their Cube-E tour, because they believed their personae were overshadowing their art. After the Cube-E tour, they didn't feel that much had changed; they felt like sideshow freaks.
As such, the Residents channeled their frustrations into this project, their own version of a freak show in which the songs themselves wee exhibited as freaks, but with an expressly human dimension. The Residents considered Freak Show their most autobiographical work.
It was also the outlet through which they took their "potato chips" concept (from God in Three Persons) to its extreme: instead of different musical releases, Freak Show spawned an album, a CD-ROM, a live show, and a graphic novel. This began the Residents' '90s infatuation with multimedia projects. Since it covered so many media, Freak Show has become one of the best known of all the Residents' creations.
RATING: 5
"Harry the Head" is a masterpiece by itself. It has a fantastic melody, creepy humor, dark beauty, and quirky mystique—all the hallmarks of the very best Residents music.
Unfortunately, "Harry" is to Freak Show what All Things Must Pass was to George Harrison: one artistic triumph against an expanse of bland mediocrity. It's clear that the Residents put their whole heart and soul into this one, not to mention volumes of hard work; so it breaks my heart to report that Freak Show is one of the most stagnant, least inspired, and least interesting products of their entire career.
So the Residents feel like a freak show attraction, and make an album about freaks to say that freaks are more than freaks. That's very noble, and I'm sure we can all relate. But, like The Tunes of Two Cities, Freak Show gets pretty redundant pretty fast. How many songs do we need to get the point? You get to choose whose stories you want to hear (and see) on the CD-ROM, but Freak Show was an album first and its concept doesn't gel.
That said, I turn to individual songs...and am as disappointed with them as I am with the go-nowhere theme. Very few songs have any real insight; "Lillie" and "Harry" do..."Jelly Jack" comes close, in snippets. The rest seem to promise more depth, like "Benny the Bouncing Bump," but ultimately the human traits the Residents assign them are often just as freaky (female wrestlers?) as their physical ones. Not that insight matters, though, because the music is lifeless enough that you don't have much interest in listening for insight anyway. Except for "Harry" and (maybe) "Mickey," the songs are self-consciously lightweight...without hooks. "Jelly Jack" is actually pretty avant-garde, in a flat, toothless sort of way. Geez, how can the Residents make avant-garde sound boring?
I'd also like to add that the female "chorus" vocal REALLY grates on my nerves.
If anyone finds more to Freak Show, please tell me. I do love "Harry," though...
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