THE THIRD REICH 'N' ROLL

If you have any taste for deconstructionist satire in rock, then Third Reich n Roll is a must have. I don't think anything else The Residents have ever done has come close to the insightful brilliance of this sarcastic slash n burn masterpiece. What we have here is a collage of late 60s pop songs stripped of their contrived hipness and exposed for the vacuous manipulative trite they really are. One song blends into the next while highly suggestive sounds from WW II remind us that there is another form of fascism, the mind-numbing manipulation of easily influenced youth in search of identity.

I actually got to meet a couple of The Residents once (sans costume eyeball disguises) but it didn't give me any insight into who appears incognito on their various albums. My theory has always been that although there may be a couple of steady members of this group, the outer members may change a bit from album to album. If that is the case, then the alumni on this album must be an all-star cast. The compositional techniques on here are just a bit better than your average Residents album, and the brilliant collaging from one tune to the next sure reminds me of similar techniques I have heard on Fred Frith albums. I have no idea if Frith contributed, but if you like his ability to subtly shift and join material from one musical idea to the next in an almost dream like fashion, then you will find much to like here.

This album is funny as hell as familiar overplayed 'chestnuts' from the commercial side of the hippy era get the roasting they so badly deserve. Not just funny and sarcastic though, this album also contains some very brilliant post modern compositional techniques that go far beyond the cookie cutter pseudo weirdness that The Residents settled on later in their very lengthy career.