Re. the lineup, from what I understand, the original band was more a democratic organization, but then in the early 80s a couple of the guys quit, and it became more the band it's been since, which is basically one poet-dude writing songs and... well... I don't actually know, and I wouldn't be surprised if the lyricist was also the main guy arranging the music and programming everything, but it could equally well be a Depeche Mode kind of setup where there's one main music guy and one main lyrics guy.
In any case, I feel there's WAY too much unity in the musical style for it to be multiple main composers of the music. It feels very composed, even if the composition is by an ensemble (e.g. one long-time percussion dude doing kind of the same things against the keys).
I disagree that all Residents albums sound different from each other. In fact, they really fricking run together for me quite a lot, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Like a good author like Kurt Vonnegut, the lyrics and themes are a growing variation on a core sensibility that's repeated through a lot of things, and likewise the music, as I said, sounds to me like the work of more or less one dude, using guest musicians (guitars/horns/etc.) to a greater or lesser extent on different albums.
In keeping with my somewhat-speculated-upon lineup history above, I also draw a pretty sharp distinction between the old Residents of Commercial Album/Duck Stab/Meet the Residents/3rd Reich (and my FAVORITE, "Not Available," which to me sounds more free and crazy), and the later, more story-oriented stuff starting maybe with God in Three Persons.
I think my favorite may be Wormwood, where the narrative is really strong and interesting and the music is in a lot of places downright pleasant. I also really dug the River of Crime stuff on iTunes, which drops all pretensions of being songs and just has some cool stories read over some cool musical backdrop. It's musical theater a la Frank Zappa.
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