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Captain Beefheart - Safe As Milk CD (album) cover

SAFE AS MILK

Captain Beefheart

 

RIO/Avant-Prog

3.83 | 218 ratings

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Mellotron Storm like
Prog Reviewer
3 stars 3.5 stars. It's been almost 5 years since I first spent time with the Captain's debut from 1967. The album cover screams the 60's with the hair style of the boys, and wearing suits of course. The music is very bluesy and psychedelic sounding with Beefhart's vocals dominating the album. My first experience with CAPTAIN BEEFHEART was that song on the "Hot Rats" album, but my first album by him was "Trout Mask Replica" which was difficult to say the least.

While this comes across as rough and dirty sounding, the music is accessible for sure. The closer "Autumn's Child" might be the most adventerous piece on here but mostly we get a vocal/guitar led album that can be quite catchy. Speaking of guitars, we get Ry Cooder and Alex St.Clair taking care of that, but the bigger surprise for me is how prominent the bass is, especially on "Zig Zag Wanderer".

With twelve tracks under 34 minutes we get a lot of 2 plus minute songs, as in eight of the twelve. It seems like a lot about this record could be described as a product of it's time. I was reminded of Zappa on a couple of songs like "Dropout Boogie" and "I'm Glad". "Yellow Brick Road" is a foot stomping affair with twangy guitars. My favourite track though is "Electricity" and perhaps the most psychedelic sounding one at that. There's theremin on it that comes and goes. Lots of harmonica on "Plastic People".

What I'm finding with Beefheart's albums for the most part is that the vocals dominate and I just get tired of them. I like this one quite a bit though.

Mellotron Storm | 3/5 |

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