THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION: WE'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY

This is hands down my favorite Mothers album. An incredibly diverse mix of styles and flavors, "We're Only in it for the Money" combines weird, avant-pop sensibilities with lyrical brilliance and top notch musicianship to create one of the tightest, most interesting albums I've ever heard.

As I mentioned, there's an incredible variety of style in the music here, ranging from pretty standard pop to avant-garde noise and even a brief parody of the tin-pan-alley style on "Bow Tie Daddy." Often there are multiple styles in one song, which is especially impressive when you see that most of the songs are less than three minutes long. That said, nothing ever feels rushed or forced, and many of the songs flow together to make the album feel much "larger" than it actually is, if that makes any sense.

Lyrically the album is a bit more focused. As evidenced by the title and the cover, this is a scathing attack on the flower-power hippy culture. Even further than that, though, I think the album's theme can be summarized in a line: "What's the ugliest part of your body... I think it's your mind" from the song of the same name. Overall, though, the lyrics are very clever and lack the gross-out anatomical nature of some of his later lyrics.

The vocals, like the music, show a great range. From the almost purposefully annoying nasal vocals on "Who Needs the Peace Corps?" to the barbershop-quartet-esque chorus of "Concentration Moon" to the spoken word passages on various tracks (which work surprisingly well) the vocals are anything but dull.

Overall then, I think this album, more than any other, gives the best all around picture of what Frank Zappa was all about and I would recommend that anyone looking to get into his music pick this one up first.

5/5