SHIP ARRIVING TOO LATE TO SAVE A DROWNING WITCH

The album starts with two throwaway pop songs. Strangely enough, one of them became Zappa's highest charting hit single. No Not Now is a simple, repetitive, and completely unmemorable song, with lyrics full of pop references and in jokes. I'm sure Frank found it very humorous. The hit single Valley Girl comes next. The song is listenable a few times, because of Frank's daughter Moon Unit's charming and funny valley girl impression.

The rest of the album contains some of Zappa's best music from the 80's. The down side is that he experimenting with some fairly bad vocal stylings at that time. I Come From Nowhere is a hard rocking tune, with lyrics sung off key with lame affectations. The vocals don't ruin the song, but they diminish it just a bit. Drowning Witch is an amazing epic (12 minute) Zappa piece that has a short segment in the middle of the same affected scat style vocals that bring down parts of "The Man From Utopia". This suegues into Envelopes, another simply amazing piece. Teenage Prostitute ends the album in grand style. This is another difficult, hard rocking song, featuring operatic vocals from Lisa (daughter of Ron) Popeil.

The two pop songs, and some questionable vocals can't hide the fact that this album contains some of Frank's best music of the decade.

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