FRANK ZAPPA — Zoot Allures (review)

FRANK ZAPPA — Zoot Allures album cover Album · 1976 · Jazz Related Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
2/5 ·
Warthur
One of Zappa's more commercially minded releases, Zoot Allures could at points be mistaken for a mainstream heavy guitar rock album if it weren't for the zany lyrics and the jazz-funk influences. The production on the album sounds a little off on all the versions I've heard, Zappa's guitar playing too often descends into empty showboating, and the material is some of his most simplistic and irritating for years.

Particularly irksome songs include The Torture Never Stops, which is appropriately titled because it goes on forever, and Disco Boy - a particularly annoying number because whilst it caters to smug rockist Zappa fans who consider themselves to be above musical genres they consider to be inferior, it ends up being just as crass, tepid and shallow as the worst excesses of the genre it lampoons. Miss Pinky and Wind Up Workin' In a Gas Station are probably the best songs in that they are catchy, amusing, and don't last too long, but even then they're hardly Zappa's top-shelf material.

I'd suggest Zappa was holding back the best stuff for the Lather set, except I've never been impressed by most of that stuff either in the context of Lather or as the separate albums (with the honourable exception of Zappa In New York). I suppose even geniuses like Zappa must run out of ideas eventually, but great googly moogly it's hard to listen to it happening.
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