YOU ARE WHAT YOU IS

You Are What You Is was another ambitious concept album in the vein of 'We're Only In It For The Money' and 'Joe's Garage', satirizing American society and cultures with several direct attack on the hypocrisy of religion, teenage culture, drugs and general narcissism, effectively packed into a great double album with some of his lushest and most intriguing arrangements so far. The songs continues in the style of both the Sheik Yerbouti and Joe's Garage albums and have also cut down a lot of the instrumental passages in favor of denser arrangements, great emphasis on the vocals, yet still with the expected virtuosity from the backing band, providing more than a few genuinely impressive moments on the record. On the surface, these songs seems of course simpler than, say his earlier works with The Mothers, but they are incredibly intricate in their execution and always highly entertaining. The humor is also at its best here, but also provides some really snarky lyrical lines such as in songs like 'Goblin Girl', 'Charlie's Enormous Mouth', the brilliantly ironic title track, and of course the wonderful anti-religious attack of 'Dumb All Over', which literary rips every ancient religious text to shreds. Many musical genres are also covered here in a very Zappa-esque way; everything from country, reggae, fusion and hard rock are on the chopping block, and the whole album manages to flow incredibly well song to song and provides a great "movie for your ears" while listening front to back. This album is definitely one of Zappa's best records after his well received 70's phase and bursts with great energy and creativity throughout, plus the lyrics are even more relevant now over 25 years later. Definitely up to par with Joe's Garage, this one is a very worthy addition to any later period Zappa fans collection, and while some of the songs are better than others, I'd overall give this one 4.5/5

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