81. Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band - Safe as Milk

Artist: Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band
Album: Safe as Milk
Year: 1967

Never heard Captain Beefheart before. This is one of the artists I've actively avoided over the years, like Frank Zappa and Ray Charles. Not going to make it through the 1001 if I don't give these guys a chance. Hopefully Beefheart would follow the trend set by the other two...I loved Ray Charles' blend of soul, country, and standards, while Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention served up one of the 1960's deliciously weird albums in Freak Out!

This album, Safe as Milk, suffers from a bit of an identity crisis. Some of the songs are pretty "normal" (about half) and the other half are absolutely bizarre. I find the weird half much more interesting, but I can appreciate that going with all your weirdest material on your debut album is probably the quick ticket to not getting to make a second one.

There are songs here like "Electricity" that amp up this "weird" quotient, with fascinating results. I really think this album could've been an influence on early Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev, other bands that had a great pop songwriting sense but opted for artsy and bizarre in lieu of shifting units. "I'm Glad" is a tender little doo-wop song. You can never quite tell if Beefheart is taking the piss here or if he's going for something authentic. Serious or not, it's one of the more memorable songs in this set. "Abba Zaba" is my favorite song here, a nonsensical song about a baboon (yes, really) with a shuffling beat and rapid fire lyrics.

What really separates this album from the crowd is the vocal stylings of the Captain himself. This guy has a really chameleon-like voice. He can pull off falsetto, he can go for scuzzy blues, he can even produce a reasonable Mick Jagger impression as on "Zig Zag Wanderer," a song somewhat akin to "Paint It Black." His voice is deep and gravelly, a good match for both the bluesier and folkier tunes here.

This is one of those dense sorts of albums that's really difficult to pin down with one listen. I can this is either the work of a man on copious amounts of hallucinogens, or a tortured genius. Maybe both. Like I said, some of the songs that play it relatively straight don't work quite as well with the oddball stuff all around it, but this is an album that practically demands repeated listens. I've listened through three times just now and it is growing on me pretty rapidly. Apparently Beefheart would go off the deep end on Trout Mask Replica a couple years later...I suppose we'll see. I look forward to hearing more from him.

Rating: Worth repeated listens