Nappytime Gorilla Museum

Note: This also appeared on www.crustcake.com

SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM
When: Sunday, May 3, 2009
Where: Red 7, Austin, TX
With: Death Is Not A Joyride and Opposite Day

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum opened the discussion the way any other band of post-apocalyptic carnival barkers would: with a nod and a wink, followed by a brutal kick to the teeth.
Like scavengers picking through the refuse and remnants of hundreds of years of popular culture (their costumes and makeup made them look equal parts Peter Pan’s Lost Boys and zombified Victorian aristocrats) SGM present an aural and visual spectacle rarely seen outside avant-garde performance-art troupes.
Come to think of it, performance art may fit them better than any clumsy music critic term. I mean, what the hell is Art Metal, anyway? Would calling it Avant Metal make any difference?
Regardless, the Oakland quintet has gathered a devoted, cult-like following in their 10-year existence. With only three true long-players released under the Sleepytime banner, each band member fills the rest of their time with a host of side projects and associated acts. Combining elements of heavy metal, Absurdist Theater, found objects, Dadaism and chamber rock, audiences are split between dumb-founded gawpers and immersive enthusiasts, who head-bang with neck-breaking intensity.
Live, the group turns dense, dark, musically acrobatic tricks, cartwheeling with Meshuggah-like proficiency around poly-rhythmic, syncopated time signatures. Ethereal vocalist/violinist Carla Kihlstedt is the light to guitarist/curator Nils Frykdahl’s demented dark. Frykdahl gives the inimitable Mike Patton a run for his money, creating 1,001 different voices, often jumping between many of them in a single song. (Appropriately, one of the few bands critics agree on comparing SGM to is Patton’s Mr. Bungle.) A true master, Frykdahl is Nick Cave, Ihsahn and Chuck Jones rolled into one.
The group’s incredible homemade instruments -- including the Electric Pancreas, Pedal-Action Wiggler and the eight-foot-long Sledgehammer Dulcimer -- were showcased alongside the more traditional guitars/bass/drums setup on flawless renditions of “Angle of Repose” and “The Widening Eye.”
Bassist Dan Rathburn introduced the previously un-released “Old Gray Heron,” dedicating the tender (by Sleepytime standards) ballad to his late father.
The two-hour-plus show was capped by a Gothic-Americana/Gospel re-working of “A Hymn to the Morning Star,” followed by the legendary “Donkey-Headed Adversary of Humanity Opens the Discussion,” from 2004’s Of Natural History.
Local openers Opposite Day whet geek appetites with a dizzying display of Devo/Primus weirdness ramped to Berklee-levels of dexterity. The less said of Death Is Not A Joyride, the better.
At times both frightening and mesmerizing, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum are proof positive that innovation and experimentation is still occurring, it’s just far, far outside the mainstream and deep, deep underground.