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    The Voice of Midnight

    10/23/2007 | Mute U.s. 

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    All Music Guide Review

    The Residents have firmly embraced the concept album for many years now. But recently, projects like Tweedles and especially The River of Crime have seen them move towards more straightforward storytelling. Well, straightforward for the Residents at least. For The Voice of Midnight, they turn their attention towards Prussian author E.T.A. Hoffmann, whose dark and creepy stories would seem to be right up the Residents' dark and creepy alley. Specifically, they take up Hoffmann's short story "The Sandman," where the young protagonist is haunted by terrible childhood memories that cloud his adult life and ultimately cause his downfall. Although the Residents transplant the story to a more contemporary setting, they stick very closely to the original story line. It's presented differently, but all the basic plot elements are the same (except for a wonderful Resident-ial twist at the end). Musically, it sounds like no one but the Residents, with the addition of strings and the screaming guitar of Residents collaborator Nolan Cook. There aren't songs per se, the main characters of Nate and Claire speak their roles; Nate only occasionally breaks into verse, and then very briefly. Both voices sound young and new to Residents recordings. The Sandman himself has a comparatively small vocal contribution and always "sings" his part. It's clearly the voice of the "Singing Resident," but longtime fans might lament his diminished role. Some nice musical touches are the allusions to Bernard Herrman's Psycho in the first track and to a Stephen Foster tune in "True Love." Part of "The Telescope" sounds almost like a dance track. The rest is suitably dark and menacing. There's even a nice eyeball tie-in with the story. This probably isn't the best place to start if you're just discovering the Residents but it's certainly interesting for fans as they head down this new path. ~ Sean Westergaard, All Music Guide

    User Review

    • field hippy

      posted on Sun, 18 Nov 2007 09:16:35

      It Breaks My Heart To Say It

      As a long, long, long time fan of The Residents, it breaks my heart to say: I hate, hate, hate, hated "The Voice of Midnight"! Frankly though, I didn't expect much after the mess that was "Tweedles". Listen: If you're going to have someone sing, the singer should at least have a pleasant singing voice, right? On this record when the "singers" "sing" the few songs that are "sung" (most are spoken, more about that later)they are TERRIBLE. It makes me almost miss the thin, tinny thin voice of Molly Harvey, almost. Frankly, for all I know the male and female singer on this could be the voice of Ms. Harvey, just modulated and manipulated. The real gender of the real singers on "TVOM" is in question. The male singer does sound like a guy, but the girl could be a guy. Even "her" speaking voice could be a guy.

      The "Victor/Victoria" theme is nothing new to THEM. Their last several releases (particularly the limited releases available only at www.ralphamerica.com) have contained not only many images of penises or penis like images, but also images of naked torsos of undetermined sex often adorned with pantyhose and the like. No breasts, no vaginas. I'm not requesting that THEY include such images, I'm just sayin'....

      Speaking of spoken lyrics (embarassingly bad spoken lyrics/I mean, who wrote this crap?): The spoken lyrics are done in the sytle of Bob Newhart, "Hello, there Abe. You say that you don't like the speech? You don't know what a "score" is? You say that you want to rewrite it on the back of an envelope? Sounds good, Abe. What's that? The train is taking off, you'll talk to me later? Okay, Abe. have a good time in Pennsylvania!"

      I guess that THEY spent too much money on their new studio and couldn't afford to pay another "singer/talker".

      If you buy this disc from www.ralphamerica.com and pay an extra %5.00, you get a bonus disc called "The Sandman Waits". This is the disc that you want. It's light hearted, yet scary. Not scary bad like "Voice of Midnight".

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    Track Listing

  • Track#
  • Title
  • time
  • lyrics
  • 1
  • The Sandman
  • 8:33

  • 2
  • Mental Decay
  • 2:56

  • 3
  • Claire's Response
  • 3:23

  • 4
  • In the Dark
  • 3:12

  • 5
  • Professor Caligari
  • 1:25

  • 6
  • The Telescope
  • 5:53

  • 7
  • True Love
  • 11:06

  • 8
  • Seven Cats
  • 6:45

  • 9
  • Catatonia
  • 2:52

  • 10
  • The Proposal
  • 5:27

  • 11
  • The Tower
  • 5:44

  • 12
  • Epilogue
  • 3:11

  • Credits

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