Tag: Captain Beefheart

Title: Captain Beefheart – Ice Cream For Crow (1982) [Japanese Limited SHM-SACD 2015]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

With yet one final Magic Band lineup in place, featuring Richard Snyder on bass and Cliff Martinez on drums alongside returning vets Jeff Moris Tepper and Gary Lucas, Beefheart put the final touch on his recording career to date with Ice Cream for Crow. It’s a last entertaining blast of wigginess from one of the few truly independent artists in late 20th century pop music, with humor, skill, and style all still intact (as even the song titles like “Semi-Multicoloured Caucasian” and “Cardboard Cutout Sundown” show). With the Magic Band turning out more choppy rhythms, unexpected guitar lines, and outré arrangements, Captain Beefheart lets everything run wild as always, with successful results. Sometimes he sounds less like the blues shouter of lore and more of a spoken word artist with an attitude, thus the stuttering flow of “The Host the Ghost the Most Holy.” “Hey Garland, I Dig Your Tweed Coat” is even more entertainingly outrageous, Beefheart’s addictive if near impenetrable ramble about tobacco juice and straw hats and more backed by an insanely great arrangement. Magic Band members each get chances to shine one way or another – “Evening Bell” in particular demonstrates why Lucas went on to later solo renown, a complex, suddenly shifting solo instrumental that sits somewhere between background music and head-scratching “how did he do that?” intrigue.

hraudio | allmusic | discogs

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Title: Captain Beefheart – Doc At The Radar Station (1980) [Japanese Limited SHM-SACD 2015]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Generally acclaimed as the strongest album of his comeback, and by some as his best since Trout Mask Replica, Doc at the Radar Station had a tough, lean sound owing partly to the virtuosic new version of the Magic Band (featuring future Pixies sideman Eric Drew Feldman, New York downtown-scene guitarist Gary Lucas, and a returning John “Drumbo” French, among others) and partly to the clear, stripped-down production, which augmented the Captain’s basic dual-guitar interplay and jumpy rhythms with extra percussion instruments and touches of Shiny Beast’s synths and trombones. Many of the songs on Doc either reworked or fully developed unused material composed around the time of the creatively fertile Trout Mask sessions, which adds to the spirited performances. Even if the Captain’s voice isn’t quite what it once was, Doc at the Radar Station is an excellent, focused consolidation of Beefheart’s past and then-present.

hraudio | allmusic | discogs

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