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The Residents - Stars & Hank CD (album) cover

STARS & HANK

The Residents

 

RIO/Avant-Prog

4.27 | 38 ratings

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admireArt
Prog Reviewer
4 stars Whoever thought that Hank Williams , or even better yet, John Philip Sousa will never have a mention in the Prog-Kingdom will be proven wrong by no one else but "The Residents"!

Who else could transpose the country music of Mr. Williams far away of its picket fences, into the realms of the underworld of Prog, the RIO/AV world.

A playful rendition for both composers, with an unusual empathy for their pen-written characters and music.... If it were not The Residents, one could easily call it a "tribute", as it sounds. (the same as with The Beatles-Residents "covers"). Enhancing the already there "surrealistic" feeling of the original Hank William's songs, they move around the "subtle" rules of his very distinguishable musical idiom.

Anyone who has heard country music (the Canterbury's did) notices this almost constant weirdness (to call it somehow), in timing and structure, and of course in lyrics, so by match The Residents have a field day!

On the other side Mr. Sousa's work is "acted up" as a march procession of his melodies, that keep on rolling without mercy, but never abusing the conceptual part of the original tunes. And that is exactly what makes this work (one of the few) more approachable and easy to listen to (for outsiders, of course), than the rest of the very extensive Resident's catalogue. It's virtue is the withholding of excesses, in favor of austerity (Resident-like, of course) with superb musical arrangements, that let course to the already there ORIGINAL musical language of the 3 entities involved.

The Resident's page is one of those, where my ratings almost match with the other "raters", so we 10 people can't be wrong!!

****

admireArt | 4/5 |

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