I'm totally embarrassed to admit it, but I waited to buy the last three Captain Beefheart albums until last December when I heard Don Van Vliet passed away. After all--two of them were recorded in the 80's, which has been proven time and again as the kryptonite decade for my favorite 70's artists, and even worse for artists who were great in the 60's. Even albums hailed as creative comebacks usually come across as pale shadows of the artist's original glory. Rarely does it felt so good to be proven wrong.
So, after they languished on my wishlist for a couple of years I finally have a chance to listen to the Captain's last three albums, and I'm kicking myself for not getting them sooner. Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) is easily the most accessible and mainstream of the bunch, but that's not to say it's anywhere near normal--a far cry indeed from Clear Spot, which has its moments but really toes the conventionality line in comparison with some of the material here.
What strikes me most about this album is how much I hear it echoing in popular music from the past 30 years. "Tropical Hot Dog Night," with its horns and overdriven guitar, sounds like the blueprint for nearly every single Cake song ever recorded, "Suction Prints" prefigures the downtown sound of bands like Massacre, while "Harry Irene" sounds like the kind of made-up story that continues to be Tom Waits' bread and butter. In appropriating the Captain's growl, instrumentation and general style, though, Waits comes across as grayscale to Van Vliet's technicolor--there's shit on here that I can't even imagine he came up with, like the buzzing and bouncing "Bat Chain Puller," the epic voyage that is "Ice Rose," and the grooving "Candle Mambo." The instrumental palette is strikingly vibrant with horns, synths and even a bit of marimba which, on paper, seems like it would be too much for Beefheart's style. Oh yeah, let's not forget the seemingly endless number of variations in Van Vliet's vocal timbre. And don't get me started on the wild, scattershot intensity of his words...
Fans of earlier Beefheart will have a lot to enjoy here, too. As always, he's still got a tight connection with the blues, as on the leadoff track and things like "You Know You're a Man" and "Love Lies," and there's enough mathematically atonal guitar interplay to keep Trout Mask Replica fans drooling throughout the instrumental passages. Most of all, this album is a hell of a lot of fun--a comeback indeed!
Get it.
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