Artist: The Residents
Album: The River of Crime!
Label: Cordless Recordings
Length: Episode One – 16:28, Episode Two – 14:56
Review By: Jacob Gehman

The Residents have a long and storied history in the world of art and music. From the early 70s avant-garde experiments to their efforts in creating some of the first examples of music videos to their 90s obsession with merging music and computer software. Now they have partnered with Cordless Recordings to try something equally groundbreaking.

The River of Crime! is meant to be a series of episodes in the tradition of old radio crime serials. They are starting off as a download-only item, with the promise of a CD compilation at a later date. Much like the old radio dramas, The Residents have decided to stagger the release of each episode. So every two weeks over the span of ten weeks a new episode is releasing. At the point of this writing only the first episode, “The Kid Who Collected Crimes!” is available.

“The Kid Who Collected Crimes!” is our introduction to the main character. The opening premise is a good one, though not entirely unheard of. The idea of someone collecting crimes is also prominently featured in an Agatha Christie novel. The Residents differentiate themselves by focusing on long descriptions of the crime, while still managing to keep the heart of the narrator intact.

The first episode’s focus is on the electric chair, talking about Thomas Edison’s electrocution of an elephant and about the only man to be electrocuted twice. When the story flashes back to those occurrences, the sound takes on a crackled feeling common to archival audio clips. It can truly be a rather shocking listen, even on repeated plays. It becomes even more so when realizing that the story of Thomas Edison electrocuting the elephant was a real event. Research online brings up some shocking photos. I haven’t searched the other specific events and names listed in either episode one or two but I wouldn’t be surprised if they are as equally historical.

“Gator Hater!” feels more single minded than it’s predecessor. It starts us off on a story of our main character sneaking off to see a gator found in the park. From there his mother tells him a story from her childhood regarding one of her friend’s mysterious disappearances, and how gators were involved. The story comes from the mother’s perspective, so our main character takes a backseat in this episode.

Both episodes are laced with The Residents music. It is reminiscent of their recent material, Wormwood and Demons Dance Alone. That era is not my favorite from them, but this works a lot better than either of those albums due to how the music is not the focus of the episodes.

There are several options for getting The River of Crime. The first episode is available from iTunes. Or, Cordless Recordings has released a set of blank CD-Rs with complete artwork and labels that you can purchase online which has a code that you can use to download all five episodes as they release, in addition to other various features like complete scripts, a track with all the music, alternate artwork, and stuff of that nature. So the hardcore Residents fan will want to go that route because when the actual CD releases at some point it will be edited down to fit on one disc, and will not have any of the instrumental music. However, for those who are more interested in the story aspects, download the first episode from iTunes and see what you think.