Intruders(2018)OverviewTracksLiner NotesLyricsStoriesCredits
Shifting from the physical world of train wrecks to the metaphysical realm of imaginary beings, The Residents present Intruders, their new studio album. Inspired by the persistence of obsession, Intruders are seen as alternate beings stalking the corners of our consciousness. The album's original songs all pivot around the unseen and the uncontrollable spirits stuck in the seams of our minds. Whether ghosts, angels, aliens, ex-lovers or an angry old woman with a bittersweet smile, we never know who or what will wedge itself into the darker recesses of our minds. Hated, loved, or merely tolerated, we all have Intruders.
Featuring familiar Residents collaborators Eric Drew Feldman, Nolan Cook and Carla Fabrizio, alongside remarkable new guests, Intruders is a collection of atmospheric, paranoia-tinged yet oddly accessible tracks, each forever glancing over its own shoulder and wondering just who is out there... Or are they in here? Is this finally, after all these years, THE REAL RESIDENTS?
- Bobbie's Burning Blues
- Voodoo Doll
- The Scarecrow
- Frank's Lament
- Missing Me
- Still Needy
- The Other
- Good Vibes
- Endless And Deep
- Running Away
- Shadows
Yesterday upon the stair
I saw a man who wasn't there
I saw that man again today
Oh, I wish he'd go away.
- Hughes Mearns
Ghosts, angels, ex-lovers, doppelgangers... we all have psychic interlopers, beings - real, imagined or projected - taking up residence in our psyches, occupying dubious mental space despite our often urgent desires to cast them out. Inflamed by the persistence of obsession, Intruders are seen as alternate, bodiless beings stalking the shadow worlds of our minds. The original songs contained on this album all pivot around these unseen and uncontrollable spirits, seeming stuck in the seams of our souls.
The idea of the double, or doppelganger, is a familiar theme throughout history. Shelley, Byron, and Dostoevsky all used the idea of duplicates in plays, novels and poetry, and Abraham Lincoln is said to have seen his doppelganger in a mirror shortly before his death. According to The Bible, Lot never forgot the pair of angels that saved him from the destruction of Sodom. And how many of us have been captivated by images of a dead alien supposedly found in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947? But whether it's evil twins, an angry cab driver or the so-called President of the United States, we never know who or what will wedge itself into the darker recesses of our minds.
Hated, loved, or merely tolerated, Intruders are real...
Aren't they?
Expand allBobbie's Burning Blues
Nothing makes me higher than the sweet song of a fire
I long to light the night with burning love
I long to light the night with burning love
I long to see their faces lit up by the glow;
Fascinated by the gnawing ugliness I know
Knowing pain and knowing nothing, knowing the stain of loss
But of course it can't be me
It can't be me, it can't be me
But of course it can't be meeeeee
Why would I cause suffering and why would I make pain
And why would I ignite the incandescent bite of flame
When I see them scream and cry
For those that they are missing
I truly know it has to be another kind of me
A thing that finds its essence in the flame
The flame that I am kissing
Voodoo Doll
Who - threw the voodoo doll at me
Who - threw the voodoo doll at me
Who - threw the voodoo doll at me
Who - threw the voodoo doll at me
It happened just the other day
Dressed in gaberdine and grey
Flannel pants and tiny shoes
The craftsmanship was crude
It looked a little bit like me
Bald on top and knobby knees
But it was woebegone and frumpy
Like a tired and tooth-less monkey
The Scarecrow
The Scarecrow is
The Scarecrow is
The Scarecrow is
Covered with crows
And suspicion
Frank's Lament
Lost! Lost! Lost! Lost!
Lost! Lost! Lost! Lost! Lost!
I fly a plane on Monday morning
One on Tuesday, too
He's always right beside me
In his alligator shoes
He likes to call me Henry
But my name is Frank
I'm just a guy from Reno
Sometimes he calls me Hank
I think he's lost
I think he's lonely
But maybe he's only
In my mind
Whenever we hit town
He laughs right in my face
And says my spirit is a shallow
Sack of human waste
I wish that I could hate him
But if the truth is told
I cannot him separate him
From an echo in my soul
Missing Me
I'm missing me
I'm missing me
I'm missing me
And it's dark
Out in the sea
Out in the sea
Out in the sea
With a shark
I'm swimming under water. I'm relaxed. For some reason I'm immune to the stifling pressure of holding my breath. Eventually, I come to the surface. I'm in a cave. There's no light so the sensory difference is the slight variation of air versus water against my face. I look around.
I'm looking for myself.
I must be here but I can't see me... can't see me.
Where will I go when I've gone away
Where will I be when I can't be me
Still Needy
Please, oh please, can I help you
Please, oh please, let me help you
Pleeeese
Please, please, oh please
Won't you help me?
Please help me
Won't you help me?
There's something that I need
I once made friends
With an other
A brother and a rudder
A lover of my needs
We found the beauty
Of darkness, apartness
And the heartless
Arabesque of need
I know nothing
Is ever lying or crying
Or denying
If its needs are pleased
Please, please, oh please
Let me help you, I'll help you
Can I help you?
I know just what you need
The Other
The other hovers over me
And covers everything I see
The other hovers over me
And covers everything... I see
Like a lover blinding me
There's another reminding me
Of every open pore, every open sore
Of every open door, I closed
The world awaits, the other aches
The world awaits, the other aches
And baits its breath and waits for more
As baits its breath and waits... for more
The other hovers achingly
Filled with emptiness and need
Making melancholy me
Recall the light of love
Good Vibes
I saw him again. I don't know if he saw me or not. Maybe he can't... or won't, or maybe I'm meaningless, within the order of his existence but... he's always there, standing outside the window... always in the same place. Everyone says they look just like you but it's not true... close, sure, but you see I have a mole on my chin and he has none. Okay, alright... he's outside in the dark, but they have to be some manifestation of a spirit world or another dimension or something... right? And if so, they would be perfect copies of our essence, right? Free from flaws and imperfections like scars and moles. But why is he there? Why? Why?
Why is... he there?
Why do... I care?
I really don't think I'm going to die... at least not anytime soon but that's what they say... if you see one, it means you're going to die. Okay... I have been losing weight... And it's happened since he appeared... It's... It's just a few pounds but now I'm getting scared to step on the scales... I know, it's weird.
Okay, the weight loss thing is getting scary. But here's the weird part... HE'S LOSING WEIGHT, TOO! It's sixty-eight pounds now... I LOST SIXTY-EIGHT POUNDS! But it... the wraith... It's almost like a human skeleton... and you better believe I'm eating like crazy... like a fucking fiend, for chrissake... I'm sitting here now eating a bacon cheeseburger... with two patties... watching him... right outside the window, like always and it's like I can see him melting away. At this rate, he'll go long before me, but... but then what?
Endless and Deep
Living in an endless
ocean without hues, he
shapes my sense of wonder
with every new excuse, he
Knows my unknown name and
Seeks my secret soul, he
waits for my remains in an
endlessly deep hole
Endless... endless... endless... endless
Hole
Running Away
I was sitting on a bus when I saw myself today
Looking out the window, I was tedious and grey
The wind was blowing black and lonely leaves along
An empty avenue, the diorama was all wrong
The other me was anxious, abandoned and alone
Looking at the limbo of a lost unknown
Nothing was near so I looked away
As the bus escaped into an empty day
Closing in around was the sound of disbelief
Closing in around was the nothingness of grief
Closing in around was color of conceit
Closing in around was the odor of deceit
Closing in around was the emptiness of need
Closing in around was meaningless of me
I was, I was
Running away!
Shadows
Shadows of shadows, the reflection of a smile
The odor of emptiness, the rotting smell of guile
Shadows in the darkness, shadows in the light
Shadows in the elegance and eeriness of night
Shadows in a cobweb hidden in the shade
Shadows in a sentimental moment that was saved
Shadows in the ether, shadows in a shroud
Shadows in the incandescent billow of a cloud
Shadows in the secret sections of a dream
Shadows on a surface that remains unseen
Shadows in an inky aromatic mood
Shadows in the shiny nothingness of new
Shadows in the sure uncertainty of mud
Shadows in the blatant blasphemy of blood
Shadows in the stale'n sorry echoes of a hug
Shadows in the acrid afterglow of love
Recollections of reflections, the choices of a child
The feelings that are lost and never ever reconciled
Shadows on the future are echoes of the past
Left behind by loneliness that lasts, and lasts, and lasts
Expand allBobbie's Burning Blues
Every morning she kisses her wife, takes the kids to school, drives to work, goes home, then does it again the following day. It's a life of dull monotonous routine, mundane predictability, tedium, until... the fever strikes.
From every outward appearance, nothing changes, but on the inside, behind the glasses, inside the pantsuit, Roberta has disappeared - purged, driven out and stuffed inside a psychic crack called Bobbie. Bobbie is the key that unlocks Roberta's cage. Bobbie is the rapture wrapped around her rage. Bobbie fills her emptiness with ecstasy and flames. Bobbie lives, until... this whore of heat is eaten, consumed by the blaze it engenders, roasted, baked and broiled in the roar it craves until... the next time.
Voodoo Doll
His head down, a troubled man is walking alone. Lost in thought, he pauses as if listening... to a voice that only he hears. Reflecting, recognition comes quickly... after all there was only one person it could have been... only one who hummed, crooned and murmured, serenading him with that odd, unearthly sound just before he fell asleep, drifting away as she sat beside him sewing, stitch after stitch, her hands in a feverish fit of constant motion. But it was so long ago... why should it come back to him now?
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a doll hit him in the chest, bouncing off and landing at his feet. Bending over, he picked it up, shocked by the feeling of recognition. Identical to him, the crudely fashioned figure was bald, wore glasses, and its knees, sticking out from a pair of funky grey shorts, were knobby and gnarled... the similarity was uncanny. Protruding from its face, its chest, its arms and legs were pins... fifty, sixty, maybe a hundred.... But the thing that really struck him was the jacket... tweed and exactly like the one he wore years ago.
The jacket was worn and tattered, but the stitching was exquisite.
The Scarecrow
It's shortly after Christmas, 2006, and a middle-aged black man is driving his car along a road edging the remnants of a long harvested corn field. The radio, tuned to an oldies station, is playing James Brown's "Say It Loud, I'm Black and Proud," a song that defined the man's youth. Brown had died a few days earlier, and the station has been playing his music nonstop ever since.
Singing along, the man glances, to his right as a static, human-like figure catches his eye. Normally he would drive past, but two things immediately strike him as strange, so he pauses for a better look. Curiously, the scarecrow is wearing a robe - a conspicuous green and blue plaid bathrobe. And as he stops to stare, an image, burned into the man's brain, suddenly reappears. The picture, a mugshot of The Godfather of Soul, reveals a sadly disheveled James Brown, reeking of pathos, and wearing what appears to be the exact same robe. Stunned, the man can't tear his eyes away from this seeming effigy, abandoned, alone and eerily reminiscent of the man he once worshipped.
The scarecrow is also covered with crows.
Frank's Lament
Is he really a pilot or does he merely imagine he's in control, steering his vehicle toward the destination of his choice? After all, no one else is truly capable of these decisions, sees the path so clearly and trusts his instincts so explicitly, while dutifully tearing triumph from the edge of agony again and again. But... there's always that nagging doubt... Is it really there, looking over his shoulder, second guessing his decisions and snickering, dismissing his determination as trivial, trite and irrelevant? Or is it, in actuality, a reflection, nothing more than an echo of his own insecurity, emboldened, like anti-matter, and possessed with the perverse and pulsating power of obstinance? We'll never know.
Missing Me
He wakes up. Sure, the dream, the one he's had so many times before - the sense of searching for himself in a weightless world - was disturbing, but after eighteen years on the same job, a nothing job, he should be upset. His life was slowly being eaten away in a soulless hospital, billing soulless insurance companies and... Okay, maybe he was providing a service for sick people but his core, his essence was empty, barren, dead...
One thing... he had one thing to hold on to, a single life preserver in an otherwise endless sea of loneliness and despair... Bowling. Alright, maybe it didn't sound like much, but it was his fire... his heat... his passion... and he had to go for it. Okay, maybe he was a little too old for the regular PBA, but not for the senior circuit. C'mon man, he told himself... DO IT!
Still Needy
Dependence... mutual dependence... where does it stop and co-dependence begin? Its need was immense, a viscous and mountainous mass that somehow manifested itself a a magic balloon, bigger than both and full of air. Rarefied air, perfect and pure like a lung full of clarity, sweetness and solitude. But a true need never dies, pulling and tugging, forever beseeching the object of its desire until it's left with no choice but to turn away, unfulfilled but still needy.
The Other
An aging man stares at a television. His wife recently passed away and his love for her was so deep, infusing his life with love, support and identity, that his grip on the world has ebbed into a frail whisper of their former robust life - and the whisper forever murmurs, softly and sweet: "Darling... dear... oh Hank, I love the way you smell..."
He sees her standing on street corners. She haunts his dreams, the echoes of her essence saturate his being. How do we replace connections that have not only occupied our days, months, and years but filled the concrete cores of our existence, he asks himself? There must be something... something... otherwise...
Good Vibes
The room is visually cluttered, emitting a static appearance, as if the many motionless objects inhabiting the space are not only glued in place but came into, and will exit, their existence in these frozen positions. The only sign of life is a man sitting in a chair, a reading light shining down on a dictionary sitting in his lap. The man's finger rests on a page slightly below the word "doppelganger," which the dictionary defines as "A ghostly double of a living person, especially one that haunts such a person."
After staring at the book for several moments, the man closes it and rises, revealing a gaunt, all but emaciated physique, defined by sharp angles protruding from the thin robe clinging to his body. Cautiously, he moves toward the center of the room, the focus of which is a large window looking out into the unkempt and overgrown expanse beyond. The window obviously hasn't been washed for years, perhaps decades, but there is one spot in the center, perhaps three feet in diameter, from which the majority of the grime has been wiped away, revealing a slightly less vague and shrouded view of the exterior. Quietly the man stares at something... something slightly humanoid in shape and seemingly staring back at him. Hours pass. Nothing changes.
Endless and Deep
It's in the past, he constantly tells himself, it's in the past. And it was only an association, a brief alliance, not much more than an acquaintance, really. Surely, nothing more. But why does it linger? Why won't it go away? Why does it keep pulling him back? ...back into that vast whirlpool of murky memories, masked recriminations and lies. Never blatant lies, of course... the other was far more subtle than that, but it knew... it knew... reveling in the art of justification, veiled superiority, effortless explanation and an all but infinite ability to reach within and draw him out... naked, vulnerable and contained. Ha! Containment... ultimately its single most critical conceit..... until it broke down, but then what? It never actually receded, like it promised.
Oh yeah, it's in the past, but... the past has gravity.
The past has weight.
The past has mass and it won't go away.
Running Away
For months his life has been slowly spinning out of control. He lost his job, his wife left him, his blood pressure is dangerously high and he needs dental implants. It's a lovely, late spring day and the thought occurs to him - a baseball game... how about taking in a baseball game? Yes... YES! A BASEBALL GAME!
Suddenly the idea of going to the ball park, eating a hot dog and sitting in the sun is all but overwhelming. Jumping out of bed, the man pulls up his pants, grabs his Phillies jacket and heads for the stop, arriving just as the bus pulls away. With the large vehicle slowly receding, another seemingly identical man, also wearing a baseball jacket, stares at him through the rear window. The man on the bus waves.
Written, arranged and performed by The Residents
With special guests: Eric Drew Feldman, Nolan Cook, Carla Fabrizio, Sivan Lioncub, Peter Whitehead and Laurie Hall
Produced by Eric Drew Feldman and The Residents
Mixed by Gabriel Shepard and Eric Drew Feldman
Residents photo by Hein Fokker
Cover and art by Poor Know Graphics
Mastered by Mark Chalecki at Little Red Book Mastering
Published by Pale Pachyderm Publishing
The Residents especially thank their Pledge Music supporters:
Michael King, Kohno Ken, Curt Fee, Bernd Rauschenbach, Dan Saytar and David Leibow
And extra special thanks to everyone at Cherry Red Records and MVD (Music Video Distributors) - our gratitude is Endless and Deep
Watch for DOUBLE TROUBLE coming soon to a theater or drive-in near you!
The Intruder(2018)OverviewTracksLyrics
A companion piece to the studio album Intruders, this single was released by Psychofon Records on both vinyl and mini CD. The b-side is a demo of "Voodoo Doll."
The Intruder
Voodoo Doll (demo)
Expand allTHE INTRUDER
Who is the Intruder?
Masked within my memories
I see him smiling in my sleep,
it's the - Intruder
A secret scent inside my skin
My indirect and unseen twin
is the - Intruder
Like an undertone of a doubt,
Always around but never found
is the - Intruder
A mirror of Malevolence
Just outside the present tense
is the - Intruder
Occupying time and space
With an echo of my face
is the - Intruder
In between me and my dreams
Like a shadow of a scream
is the - Intruder
How can everyone but me
Know this nameless thing
and see - the Intruder
