Like their masterpiece Eskimo, the story of the Residents’ new album starts with a cryptoethnomusicological discovery: in this case, the complete recorded works of an albino bluesman from western Louisiana named Alvin Snow.

Under the stage name “Dyin’ Dog,” the story goes, Snow cut ten agonized electric blues originals with his band, the Mongrels, before falling off the face of the earth in 1976. Whether the last straw was the death of his pet dog, the death of his elderly ladyfriend, or the death of Howlin’ Wolf, no one can say. Only these screams of rage and shame remain.

(There’s a mini-documentary on the Residents’ YouTube channel about Dyin’ Dog, and Homer Flynn of the Cryptic Corporation discussed the legend of Alvin Snow with us last December.)
 

The Residents’ new album, out July 10

Dyin’ Dog’s songs about sex, death, death, sex and death came out last year on a now quite scarce seven-inch box set released by Psychofon Records. On the new album Metal, Meat & Bone: The Songs of Dyin’ Dog, the Residents interpret the Alvin Snow songbook with help from the Pixies’ Black Francis, Magic Band and Pere Ubu alumnus Eric Drew Feldman, and other high-quality musical guests. The album also reproduces Dyin’ Dog and the Mongrels’ demos in full stereo abjection.

John Sanborn’s video for the Residents’ take on “Bury My Bone,” exclusively premiered below, is mildly NSFW. Then again, in time of plague, work itself is NSFW. And this is a blues song about a dog looking for a hole to bury his bone in, for fuck’s sake.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Residential: Homer Flynn on the Residents’ ambitious ‘God in Three Persons’ show at MoMA
Take a walk around a masterpiece with the Residents’ ‘Eskimo Deconstructed’
Exclusive video and music from the Residents’ new album, ‘Intruders’