If you agree that Frank Zappa is a musical genius, you will probably like Sleepytime Gorilla Museum's Of Natural History. That's really the best I can do; the group's third full-length brings together so many different musical genres and so many different types of delivery that it's hard to describe, let alone categorize.
Clocking in at more than seventy minutes (with one fourteen-minute song) would seem to imply an overreaching, meandering approach to avant-rock. Instead, even with tracks like the six-minute theatrical highlight, "Hymn to the Morning Star" and the eleven-minute "FC: The Freedom Club," the album is remarkably economical and tight.
And the band itself manages to be humorous and inviting rather than pretentious and exclusive. Don't get me wrong, 90 percent of the people who hear this are going to hate it. But the open-minded ones will at least see the high level of talent on display; it's hard to miss. And the few who will like it are in for a treat.
