Jonas posted the following Constructive Criticism: I am offering my published article on The Residents' Animal Lover from 2005: Copyright, Jonas Golland, 10/05 The 'Same Old' Residents, as they brand themselves on the inner cover of their latest and polished work, Animal Lover, come to us again in character with a richness of new timbres. They flow on bluer emotions and refine sincerely desperate images. Animal Lover is no ‘Commercial Album’ for it is more involved in long-term feelings as the new songs ‘My Window’, ‘The Whispering Boys’, and ‘Mother No More’. It is no ‘Duck Stab/Buster&Glen’ for it's more matured and less playful. They come dark and deceptively personal, well aware, as they are, of impersonal meaning. Compared not only with their impacting works it is fresh and terribly grasping if allowed. Compared with ‘Demons Dance Alone’, perhaps their poppiest album, it goes melancholic again, seemingly involuntarily, with more nourishing music and less repressed pain. Compare the pointedness of Demons Dance Alones’ title track with Animal Lovers' central dirge, ‘My Window’ and you hear another countless example of the bands' art of specifying their albums’ character. I mean by this that they evoke such a world in each album that has always grasped a new part of the psyche, the listener. Listen and see what you think, for it is not easy to keep up with this most eccentric band of closeted intuition, journeys beyond taboos, analysis of how we see, or just childish dressing-up and stripping gone balmy all night. Besides the ideas one may get, this band is empathetic as well evocative, and if you know them, you are expecting some level of surprise. They are truly a channel of variety on every album, and so interesting to follow because, like Hermann Hesse, they show largely of their unique and universal experiences. But this one might be a bit more considerate to conventional ears than others. The production uses a depth and range of orchestral, vocal, electronic, clean, organic, and traditional instruments set to a tired or gloomy disposition, and with far more controlled discordance than fans are used to. From the process of 'On the Way to Oklahoma' to the well-timed calming instrumental ‘Ingrid’s Oily Tongue’, there is a mood that sustains it, though challenging. There seems no end to the instrumentation they have constructed up to now, and perhaps with more layers than ever. Experimentation was more deliberate in most of their work, whereas now they advance composition and use chaos with more timing, creating, much more strictly, pieces of music utilizing noise and sound rather than the reverse or near to it. For those that know the latter works, more clean musical composition is not new. Animal Lover compared with Wormwood compositionally is more undressed and personal, using more gradual key changes, rhythms that are easier to take for their lack of need to shift and surprise. But when you really compare these two spectacular albums, it all boils down to theme and direction. Wormwood has the hollow fear of God through and through. It touches the atmosphere of modern church and the ancient confusion of man’s worship and devices. Animal Lover comes of a different need altogether, and is more broad than Wormwood, covering rawness with a deeper resonance of weathered musical parts, and generally leaning towards the soothing. One suspects the band is starting to put therapy into their music rather than strictly theme. The Residents are closer to attracting recognition from a wider audience, but still far from right-field. Their themes and lyrics point to unresolved psychosis and differing natures of corruption with humour, though not all certain as ever, but are by far not as self-satisfied (though one still tends to get transported into their world without a map). Inner conflict seems to be a theme. The Animal Lover bonus CD has no title except for two passages in opposite colours. One gives an account of an experience which can’t be taken as much more than a joke due to its incoherence. The other passage explains that experience more practically, emphasizing time running out and the importance of remembering what had happened before the memories were ‘absorbed by my Imaginary Jack.’ That CD reinterprets the original Animal Lover songs with intensified imagination in what is at some times like a river-ride through sensory overloads. It seems carefully constructed, considering their style of quick and impulsive compositions and arrangements, and veers from their new cohesiveness. By the end, if the listener is still at attention, they may sense disturbance and sickness. It is the escape from Animal Lover songs taken to extremes and overdone on purpose [For a schizophrenic it could have twisted effects, even for Residents music]. By its urgency one is reminded of the 2003-4 album 12 Days of Brumalia that sneaked at us effortlessly with its disguised and hot electric energy (with the use of widely-used samples), as if appealing to the night-life of very affluent politicians. These mostly instrumental tracks are very un-self-conscious, urgent and drive with American traditions; themes of Thanksgiving ‘turkey-day’, greed, pity, and an exaggerated revamp of Jello Jack the Boneless Boy. The track Day 12 musically dramatizes a heated political rally with such fullness, using car horns, crowd rages and tinkling cocktails, that plays a scene of ceremonious distraction in the face of crisis brilliantly and manipulatively. Many of the sampling, hot tones and honestly straight guitars are used similarly in Animal Lover. 12 Days is probably a sharper work than the bonus ‘Imaginary Jack’ CD, but like all their work, they have given each a special gift that cannot compare with the rest in at least one way. But while Animal Lover is more accessible, longer, and more whole than 12 Days, it is a different take, partly, on popular music. 12 Days is more of a semi-dance album. You wonder how or how much farther into pop they will go. You wonder what they won’t do. Listening to them progress through Wormwood, Icky Flix, Demons Dance Alone, 12 Days of Brumalia and Animal Lover, these are serious works of reckoning with the masses (who are mostly not listening), a struggle which could be called unnecessary in the music market. Animal Lover the album is a more connective, more collected part of the Residents’ journey than others, and though you wonder whether you’ll learn something more from it in 3 years’ time, it has some sincerely well written songs like ‘Burn My Bones!’ ‘Monkey Man’ ‘Dead Men’, or ‘Elmer’s Song’. Upon first hearing Elmer’s song I was stunned into thinking it was the first religious or sincere thing they had put out. The lyric ‘God is waiting for you’ was believable and curious at first. But then it falls into mockery with Elmer’s lyrics of ‘White people should remain in bed.’ Elusive again, and more conniving than ever I’ve heard them before, it is so beautifully played, a tempo of baptism in a river, that steel guitar rocking you to sleep, hypnotizing, clean and chiming, and against a huge regal chorus that calls you from the inside. That’s a first. I don’t know who engineered the album but that guitar has more qualities than it seems it could. I think it’s one aspect of the well-crafted balance of this album, an example of the conducive production which has improved almost every time. In this album the Residents have been patient: they have stayed familiar (with the flexibility that will always allow them), and kept sight of so many more varieties of mood, colour, (though often melancholic), arranged plainly beautiful parts for classical instruments, and done some self analysis as well. The theme of creating ones’ own world occurs. ‘On the Way to Oklahoma’ is about becoming your own fantasy, told by a cat. Whether the rest of the album continues this idea, aside from the bonus CD, begs more investigation. They typically aim at the nature of things, so a song like ‘Olive and Grey’, referring to the hue of a stolen penis, is probably based on someone’s personal views. There is for each song a story of an animals’ (except the Monkey Man) account of the songs event. These give enlightening ideas and play on words at times in pleasing ways. But whether they offer themselves towards an overall theme of the album I have yet to understand. It is good to have a different point of view for each song, especially when they are character driven. The Monkey Man’s story and song is about societies’ restrictions on communication, clearly, but with plenty of room for the mysteries of the Monkey Man, who just stares at people, to be re-evaluated. Two Lips is a wonderful materialistic rampage in the mind of the consumer. The parallel story is of the ant who cannot learn to understand why the man, who has mounds of possessions, sells everything he has to buys tulips which are so impractical. It’s cleverly ironic how greed of image drives the man to sell his life to tulips, because losing everything for beauty is not the answer either. The bridge the Residents are building from the deep inner world to the brave expense of the outer could be called brave, or laborious. If only they would be clearer and simpler with their ideas. They are so very indulgent with expressing the urgent that their message may be lost. Not enough have heard of ‘America’s most eccentric band’, or ‘The world’s most famous unknown band.’ Listeners have to volunteer to be taken in to their world. And after going the stretch, it unfortunately doesn’t resemble reality too often. Of course that’s a good thing, but not always accessible. It is my hypothesis, therefore, that the whole business of memories being absorbed by this Imaginary Jack is a cry for help or a warning against the powers of imagination (from utmost, overt trip-heads). Just listen to them spin out of control and lead into madness, giving us permission to go bonkers for over 30 years.