That’s right, folks, the most disturbing Halloween EVER! From now until Halloween, the Popdose staff are going to be thumbing through their record collections in search of the music that gives them the worst case of the heebie-jeebies. In Anthony Hansen’s case, it’s the Residents’ Roadworms: The Berlin Sessions (2000).

In a way, the Residents might be the definitive Halloween band. Preferring to stay completely anonymous, they’ve never appeared in public without some kind of costume — usually disembodied eyeballs with tuxes and top hats. Their few interviews are often fielded by their management company (the aptly named Cryptic Corporation), while the Residents themselves silently clown around with the childlike creepiness of deranged amusement park mascots. On top of that, their music is often deliberately perverse, unpleasant, and bizarre. In their early career this was often played for laughs — their first few albums are sublime slices of Dadaist nonsense — but their later works have been increasingly, almost unrelentingly dark.

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