Of the Last Human Being by Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

As a bit of a human myself, it’s tough for me to set aside all my warm feelings for others in my life and look at our entire species with a blanket feeling of disgust, but that’s exactly what avant-prog band Sleepytime Gorilla Museum accomplishes on their new record, Of the Last Human Being. On this maximalist, theatrical epic, even the most well-intentioned human characters appear to us covered in a thick layer of filth, pointing fingers at one another as the world falls victim to human behavior. Even a fiddle gently playing beautiful, tender folk melodies fails to escape the ridicule, joining in an anti-celebratory marching band that spews cynicism and self-reflection in place of fight songs and encouragement. Calling this album post-apocalyptic requires us to acknowledge that we’re currently living in the apocalypse, as the stories being told here feel contemporary and commonplace, requiring only the slightest of negative spins to become a pathetic death rattle.