Published on Sep 15, 2005
If Frank Zappa committed any sin with his 1981 release
You Are What You Is, it’s that he sounded detatched from the
music he and his band were creating. His level of interest in the
music could be described as “minimal,” and almost seemed bored by
the proceedings. Also, the inter-twining of the songs just didn’t
seem to work as well as it may have on earlier discs.
His very next effort,
Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch, tries to
correct some of those errors. This selection of six songs puts
Zappa back into single-song mode, without linking one concept to
the next, and he admittedly does sound a little more interested in
the music. If only the selections lived up to the additional effort
that Zappa undoubtedly made.
This isn’t to say that this is a bad album; things start off
great with the leadoff track “No Not Now” leading right in to
questionably Zappa’s most successful song (at least on the charts),
“Valley Girl”. Backed by daughter Moon Unit recreating the dialogue
of the girls she was growing up with, Zappa unintentionally did
something. Instead of lampooning a facet of society like he had
been doing his entire career, he actually managed to
create one (or, more correctly, build on an existing
condition and turn it into a fad). Granted, Moon Unit’s dialogue
seems very dated today, but this does remain an enjoyable song
nonetheless.
Things start to go a little south with the free-association
pseudo-jazz number “I Come From Nowhere”. Now, I recognize that
Zappa and crew had been known to do scat-like vocals on songs with
the accompaniment following the vocal line before. But it just
doesn’t work as well this time around – compare it to “The
Dangerous Kitchen” which would follow on the next album, and see
the difference. Likewise, I’ve never been a fan of Lisa Popeil’s
orgasmic operatic warblings, so her presence on “Teenage
Prostitute” basically kills the song for me.
The highlight of this disc is the 12-minute epic “Drowning
Witch,” which showcases the band in all its glory. Zappa may have
said that even this version had imperfections (and that no band
ever performed this number live correctly), but you’d have
to have an ear a la Sherlock Holmes to be able to pick those
miscues out of the piece. This piece almost seems to wrap up the
previous eight to ten years of Zappa’s live work in one number, and
does so well – so much so, in fact, that the follow-up track
“Envelopes” not only continues the thread but pushes it into the
next level.
Despite the successes of this disc,
Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch lacks one
essential thing: permanence. Unlike many other of Zappa’s albums,
this one isn’t the kind of disc that you throw in the CD player and
let repeat until the landlord threatens to kick you out. It’s an
okay disc, for sure, but it’s usually good for one listen all the
way through – two, tops – before I get tired of it and want to
refresh my musical palate. It’s got good material at times, but
this is one disc that occasionally feels like Zappa and crew may
have been treading water.
2005 Christopher Thelen and “The Daily Vault.” All rights
reserved. Review or any portion may not be reproduced without
written permission. Cover art is the intellectual property of the
Zappa Family Trust / record label, and is used for informational
purposes only.