The Bottom Line: The Residents try to tackle the biases and problems with religion and only create biases and problems of their own. Wormwood is a disappointment.
Musical_Guru's Full Review: Wormwood: Curious Stories from the Bible by Reside...
Verily, I say unto you: this album sucketh.
Raised in America's Deep South, the Residents were no strangers to the Bible. But they found it interesting
how many people held up the Bible as the bastion of goodness and purity, when in fact it contains
some rather gruesome, depraved, and even erotic texts. This willful ignorance was sad, reasoned the Residents,
both because good is only measured in comparison to evil and because some of those baser Biblical episodes made
for really great stories. Thus inspired, the Residents spent a year researching before they wrote, recorded and
released WORMWOOD, their first project specifically designed for studio album since 1992. Each song was based on
a Bible story, with the CD's liner notes citing and paraphrasing each story to provide context for the corresponding
lyrics.
That said, the basic theme seems to be "sex and violence are as vital a part of humanity as religious faith is." Well,
the Residents made that point already on their brilliant GOD IN THREE PERSONS in 1988, and said it there with much
more power and elegance. So why the WORMWOOD retread, unless they feel the need to dumb this message down?
But that's not really the problem. Oddly enough, the problem is that they did a year's research before they started
WORMWOOD. It seems to have detached the group far too much from the subject matter, made their approach to the project
very sterile and academic when the "human element" was supposed to be the whole point. At least that's my best guess
as to why the best songs on this disc are the bland, limp ones, like "How to Get a Head," "God's Magic Finger," or
"I Hate Heaven" (the closest WORMWOOD comes to a peak). The worst are the ugly and unlistenable ("KILL HIM!" and the
horrendous "Dinah and the Unclean Skin," easily the worst composition in the Residents' 30-year backlog),
and the common thread running through all songs, tolerable and not, is cynicism and condescension. Fact is, this may be
the first time in history that a CD's liner notes are better than the music: the liners are funny, concise, and
thought-provoking...when you get past their smarminess. (Humor is a crucial part of the Residents' music, and theirs is
very admirable but not when it pretends to be noble.)
I'm really not a religious person, but I know enough to say that "humanizing" means "showing a balanced picture." If you
want to talk about the contradictions inherent in the Bible, well, (1) get in line; and (2) talk about BOTH SIDES. If
you can't measure goodness without bad, you can't judge badness without good. That's how it works.
WORMWOOD is religious criticism at its least appealing, aesthetically and intellectually. Sorry,
folks in the Eyeballs: you're geniuses through-and-through, but this one doesn't impress.
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