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Sleepytime Gorilla Museum — Of the Last Human Being
(Bandcamp no#, 2024, CD / LP / DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2024-04-04

Of the Last Human Being Cover art

San Francisco in the 90s was an amazing cauldron of creativity — it seems every few weeks one could catch the revered Idiot Flesh opening for the amazing Czech powerhouse Už Jsme Doma at various venues around the city, sometimes with sideshows and a circus-like atmosphere. Then, at the end of the decade following their third album Fancy, Idiot Flesh teamed up with Jewlia Eisenberg’s band Charming Hostess for a period of time, then a new band formed out of some ex-members of the original Idiot Flesh / Charming Hostess big band, and of course that was the Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and again, nary a week would pass when this amazingly strange band wasn’t playing somewhere in the city or surrounding Bay Area. We interviewed the band shortly before the release of their debut album Grand Opening and Closing and championed their arrival with a roundtable review. A live album followed, then two more studio albums, all over around a five year period, during which time the band continued gigging as membership changed around the core of Carla Kihlstedt (violin, vocals, etc,) Dan Rathbun (bass, vocals and various homemade instruments), and Nils Frykdahl (guitar, vocals, more homemade instruments). The 2007 album In Glorious Times included drummer Matthias Bossi and multi-instrumentalist Michael Mellender, which coincidentally is the same lineup as the album at hand, an album that was started back in the day but never finished — until now, seventeen years later. Yes, there was that Free Salamander Exhibit album back around 2016, which was essentially SGM without Kihlstedt, but for whatever reasons, the whole group decided to get back together, finish what they started so long ago, and set out on a nationwide tour to boot. Listeners who appreciated the earlier studio albums can approach this latest offering with no concerns, this is the real deal SGM, every bit as strange, unusual, extreme, and mysterious as ever, perhaps with more attention to vocal harmonies. Songs like “Save It!,” “No Exit,” “Salamander in Two Worlds,” “S.P.Q.R.,” and “Old Grey Heron” generate the same kind of excitement as the best material from years past. With Of the Last Human Being, Sleepytime sends a clear declaration that they are back in action.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Carla Kihlstedt

More info
http://sleepytimegorillamuseum1.bandcamp.com/album/of-the-last-human-being

 

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