A Sleepytime Gorilla Museum show is as tightly rehearsed as a Broadway musical and as volatile and fearsome as a circus act built around feral grizzlies.
The opening acts last weekend at Neumos in Seattle were suitable appetizers – oddball quartet Sugar Skulls wove prog, funk, jazz, and riot grrrl punk by way of synthesizer, bass, violin, and drums. Pleaseeasaur, a two-man (performer J. P. Hasson and multimedia technician Thomas Hurley III) outfit playing something that looks and sounds a little like the late Andy Kaufman trying his hand at electroclash, displayed the kind of skewed populist showmanship we could expect from the headliners.
Of course, nothing can prepare the uninitiated for what Sleepytime Gorilla Museum deliver. SGM draw inspiration from antiquated science texts, obscure folktales, classic horror, Victorian melodrama, snake oil sales pitches, and anything else they find in the attic; these ingredients float about in a heady, rhythmically fervent prog-rock brew wherein fierce blasts of art-metal erupt without warning from a placid, mystical drone.
But they work awfully hard to reel the audience in, peppering the onslaught with smart, funny stage banter. Frontman/guitarist Nils Frykdahl’s persona is simultaneously inviting and threatening; vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Carla Kilstedt – featured prominently in the new material – is a gifted musician and a mesmerizing, feline presence.
Of the material from the new CD, In Glorious Times (The End), the epic opener “The Companions” and the blistering black metal rant “Helpless Corpses Enactment” stood out, but separating the experience into something so prosaic as songs is something of a cheat given the potency of the Museum’s experiential wash.
– Lyam White