Live music review: Cult icons The Residents brought career-spanning set to Austin on Easter
San Francisco’s The Residents are an anomaly. You know them, it’s the band that wore eyeballs and top hats on their heads and posed by the Golden Gate Bridge. The group has been around for over 50 years and has released countless albums, films, and other weird offshoots that make up The Residents’ body of work that spans many different sounds and conceptual pieces. When the band tours, the members wear masks and various costumes to keep their identities a secret, even though their loyal fans have poked around and have a good idea who the members might be. In short, The Residents are proud freaks, and the fans are too. They showed up for their performance in Austin last Sunday.
Since forming in 1972, they’ve since created an organization dubbed The Cryptic Corporation to over see their projects. The organization is headed by Homer Flynn, the band’s road manager and frequent collaborator. While this all sounds like a convoluted, nonsensical absurdist B-movie production, fans of The Residents rejoice and bask in every bit of it. With 50 years under their belt, they still release cohesive bodies of work that make each subsequent tour unique. When they arrived in Austin for their long-awaited return since the pandemic, the production was a bizarrely entertaining presentation chronicling their long, fabled career.
The Residents arrived in Austin to play the newly reopened Parish, a venue that recently underwent repairs for a fire that damaged the venue to the point of closing for months last Fall. Parish is an intimate setting with a capacity 450, allowing fans to get in spitting distance of the acts that come through the venue. To begin the evening, the group showed their new film Triple Trouble. The film featured several references to the history of The Residents, including the famed eyeballs and other costumes the band has become known for. It centered around a plumber related to a member of The Residents in search of a faith other than that of a God after retiring from his life as a priest. The film featured surrealist art that went hand in hand with The Residents music, setting the stage for the band’s bizarre live spectacle.
The Residents emerged wearing suits and ties with the aforementioned signature eyeballs printed all over. All wore sunglasses with lights attached to them, all matching. They began their set with cover tune “Jambalaya (On the Bayou)” by the late Hank Williams. A vintage, 1952 song being performed by the current iteration of The Residents was a wonderfully strange way to begin the evening. “Hello Skinny” from the band’s 1978 classic Duck Stab, followed. The haunted house style keyboard on this track carried the Resident’s grisly, spoken-word vocal delivery, making it sound like a new, heavier version of the early Residents cut.
The band continued its set with more classic tunes from their catalog. Selections such as “Bach is Dead,” “Boxes of Armageddon,” and “Would We Be Alive?” rounded out the first leg of the band’s set. The Residents have tons of albums focused on various concepts as does the band’s tours.. However, the current tour set shows the band busting out all the classics for a career-spanning spectacle.
“Constantinople,” likely the band’s most famous track, appeared at the halfway mark. The tune was the first I heard from the band when a former colleague recommended The Residents when I worked at a local movie store. “Here I come, Constantinople,” from shitty retail speakers, was a life-changing experience. Other Duck Stab tracks unveiled on Sunday evening included “Blue Rosebuds” and “Lizard Lady,” which contained new flavors due to the group’s advanced instrumentation in their current formation. Duck Stab is a gateway drug for The Residents. Any new fan should start there.
The guitar work from the band’s guitar player since 1998 was a total shred fest. Nolan Cook employed his whammy bar and tapping skills to make up the dissonant, razor-sharp melodies throughout the set. The track “Kill Him!” from the band’s Biblical record Wormwood was accompanied by searing guitar leads from the mysterious musician who reluctantly admits membership in the group. You also should know that Cook has been around the block with other bands, such as Dimesland and Ostrich Von Nipple, which are worth checking out for more of the searing avant-goodness the guitarist has to offer.
The set continued with new selections from the band’s 2020 record Dyin’ Dog. “She Called Me Doggy,” “Hungry Hound,” and “Die Die Die!,” showcasing the band’s more rock-oriented, instrumentally, technical side rather than the retro synth-laden sound that the band originally recorded. When “Die Die Die!” closed out the main set, the tune was a rollercoaster of menacing vocals and face-melting guitar leads.
For the encore, it felt like they’d just showcased a concise presentation of everything The Residents have accomplished so far. With performances of tunes from almost every era, the group executed each song flawlessly, showing the audience they still have it after all this time.
The encore included a selection from the legendary Commercial Album, “When We Were Young,” a 1-minute cut that set the stage for the final two tunes of the evening. “Diskomo” from the 1977 record Eskimo created a soundscape of droning art rock madness, a welcome entry for the final tunes for the night.
“Nobody Laughs When They Leave” from the circus-themed album Freak Show wrapped up the evening. “Everyone Comes to the Freak Show To Laugh at the Freaks and the Geeks” seemed like a fitting line to end the night. The Residents’ fans are fanatical, and still going strong after 50 years of music that’s inventive as it is strange.
All photos by Case Cockrell. The Residents Golden Gate image courtesy of WBUR
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