Frank Zappa
's liner notes for
Freak Out!
name-checked an enormous breadth of musical and intellectual influences, and he seemingly attempts to cover them all on the second
Mothers of Invention
album,
Absolutely Free
. Leaping from style to style without warning, the album has a freewheeling, almost schizophrenic quality, encompassing everything from complex mutations of "Louie, Louie" to jazz improvisations and quotes from
Stravinsky
's Petrushka. It's made possible not only by expanded instrumentation, but also
Zappa
's experiments with tape manipulation and abrupt editing, culminating in an orchestrated mini-rock opera ("Brown Shoes Don't Make It") whose musical style shifts every few lines, often in accordance with the lyrical content. In general, the lyrics here are more given over to absurdity and non sequiturs, with the sense that they're often part of some private framework of satirical symbols. But elsewhere,
's satire also grows more explicitly social, ranting against commercial consumer culture and related themes of artificiality and conformity. By turns hilarious, inscrutable, and virtuosically complex,
is more difficult to make sense of than
, partly because it lacks that album's careful pacing and conceptual focus. But even if it isn't quite fully realized,
is still a fabulously inventive record, bursting at the seams with ideas that would coalesce into a masterpiece with
's next project. [A two-LP 50th Anniversary Edition of
was released in 2017; pressed on 180-gram vinyl, the remastered set featured 20 minutes of rare and previously unreleased bonus material, including the "Why Don'tcha Do Me Right" b/w "Big Leg Emma" single, a couple of radio ads and vintage alternate mixes. "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" has a very different mix and more prominent drums while "America Drinks and Goes Home" is missing the familiar 'bar ambience' sound effects. The package also featured
's original LP layout and a reproduction of his 18-page "libretto," which had been offered by mail order when the original album was released.] ~ Steve Huey