The Tunes of Two Cities and Intermission were the first Residential recordings I ever heard, having been prompted to look for some after reading Matt Howarth 's Savage Henry . The Tunes of Two Cities is Part Two of The Mole Trilogy . It collects and contrasts examples of the music of the Mole and Chub cultures. The tracks alternate between the fluffy, Art Deco music of the superficial Chubs and the dark, tribal music of the Moles.
Chubs are only concerned with leisure and want nothing to do with real-world problems.
To emphasise this, many of the Chub tracks are mutated covers of escapist big band songs from the 1920s and 1930s. In fact, one can look at the Mole music as being an extension of some of the ideas which the Residents examined at in that album, just as the Chub's twisted versions of 1930s popular music harkens back to The Third Reich 'N' Roll 's versions of '60s pop. The Mole tracks feature dark, primitive vocal lines made up of chants and prayers, while the Chubs' music is entirely instrumental. The Tunes of Two Cities was the first album The Residents made featuring their new toy, the EM-U Emulator . They appeared on the collection Residue and were restored to the program in the ESD CD release of Tunes , but do not appear on the Bomba remastering.