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".