Not Available<\/em>. The entire affair does have a showy, stagy feel, but of course it\u2019s warped almost beyond comprehension by The Residents. Plans were in fact underway for actual performances of the story, and the 2011 reissue includes photos from rehearsals. As one might expect, the photos are themselves a bit disturbing. Not for the kiddies, to be sure.<\/p>\nThe Residents have never allowed themselves to be constrained by normal rules of melody or arrangement. A casual listen might lead one to decide it\u2019s all noise, but nothing could be less accurate than that assumption. \u201cThe Making of a Soul\u201d — the second of four long tracks that comprise the bulk of the record \u2013 is built around a squawking saxophone riff, joined by creepy chanted vocals. A lovely piano part quickly falls apart into something more sinister, showcasing a common Residents approach: draw the listener in with something relatively accessible, and then once they\u2019re hooked, hit \u2018em over the head with something deeply weird. The piano and string arrangement of the track\u2019s midsection is joined by an affected spoken vocal. What the lyric \u201cWelcome to the offshoots of Jupiter\u201d might possibly mean is left to the listener to decipher. Or not.<\/p>\n
Acoustic piano, synthesizer strings and some dissonant flute-like instruments kick off \u201cShip\u2019s A\u2019going Down,\u201d the strangest and least-accessible track on Not Available<\/em>. The Enigmatic Foe character appears, and the Residents equivalent of a Greek chorus adds commentary. By the middle of the track, several tunes — all dissonant — seem to be playing at once. And while The Residents rarely sound even a little bit like anyone else, in places this tracks is reminiscent of Mike Oldfield<\/strong>\u2019s Tubular Bells<\/em>. The synthesizer work toward the track\u2019s end is interesting, almost subtle.<\/p>\nThe first half of \u201cPart Four: Never Known Questions\u201d is The Residents at their most musical; there\u2019s almost a rock beat to the song. In some ways the track points toward the relatively tuneful approach the group would employ on The River of Crime<\/em> some thirty years later. But the groaning recitation that makes up the track\u2019s second half is, well, not exactly ear candy. A short \u201cEpilogue\u201d reprises some of the musical themes from throughout the piece; think of it as an overture, or maybe even \u201cResidents on 45\u201d if you\u2019re in a perverse mood. A child\u2019s voice adds yet another unsettling layer to the whole affair.<\/p>\nNot among the most accessible of the releases from this notoriously difficult outfit, Not Available<\/em> remains a rewarding if wholly challenging listen for the adventurous. Or you could play it to get your mother-in-law to go home. Of course I\u2019ve never met your spouse\u2019s mom, but I feel certain it would work on that level. If it doesn’t<\/em>, well, then I suspect you have problems of another sort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leave it to the folks at MVD Audio to mount a reissue of an album that (a) as legend has it wasn\u2019t supposed to have even been released the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1823],"class_list":["post-502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-residents","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30770,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions\/30770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/residents_not_available.jpg\")
Leave it to the folks at MVD Audio to mount a reissue of an album that (a) as legend has it wasn\u2019t supposed to have even been released the first time; (b) didn\u2019t shift in any sort of huge quantities on initial release and (c) is an exceedingly difficult listen.<\/p>\n