This is a band I’ve like for a while. I’ve listed them as a favorite. I’ve made it a point to look for tour dates or new releases on their web site. I drove up to Boston on a Sunday night to see them. I did all that because I was sure I liked this music but I wasn’t sure that I loved it. I needed to settle that. It’s settled – I love this band. I love this music. It’s thunderous and lovely, whimsical and absurd, and frequently disturbing. It’s also very smart, very technical, and funny.

The Donkey Headed Adversary of Humanity Opens the Discussion

I make it a point to buy CDs when attending shows. The bands actually get some money when you’re buying it from them directly. In this case it was SGM’s second album “Of Natural History” that I picked up. I already owned the first “Grand Opening and Closing” and the most recent “In Glorious Times” which I’ve listened to many times. “Of Natural History” is likely the strongest of the three. The album art and text is a mythologizing blend of fictional characters, events, and ideas (I can’t prove the non-existence of the Sleepytime Gorilla Press in 1934 or Ikk Ygg) and some real ones – there’s a marvelous insert in the CD which pits the Italian Futurists (violently pro-machine) against Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber (violently anti-technology). The striking thing is the anti-humanism in the credos of both. SGM explores this in several songs on “Of Natural History” and elsewhere. Their first film, now in post-production according to their web site (although it may be another hoax) is titled “The Last Human Being”. 

But I don’t find anything misanthropic about SGM. Nils Frykdahl, the band’s musical and visual center, may be a scary looking dude  but I suspect he’s really a sweetheart. Between songs he verbalized a fondness for wooded areas (driving through Connecticut) and babies (there is an actual live baby on their tour bus but I’m not sure which band member is responsible). The songs are unflinchingly dark though, and you can almost imagine a world without humans. But not one without music.