FilboidStudge's Full Review: Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart & the Magi...
In 1968, a hardy band of musicians called the Magic Band congregated in a tiny rented house in a leafy Californian backroad under the command of Don Van Vliet, also known as Captain Beefheart. In the tortured months which followed, they painstakingly memorised every note and drumroll of what sounds at first like the most chaotic soup of a noise that's ever been served up. But this album's a veritable rainforest of a grower. Everyone remembers where they were when they first heard 'Trout Mask Replica', and how they were repulsed and yet strangely fascinated by this whole other musical plain.
Beefheart comes over like some demented farmer in many songs, field-hollering skewed observations about wild geese and fat women. He's accompanied by a cacophonous, shifting velcro of wildly complex guitar lines which lock in and out of each other like crows trying to mate in a strong wind. Pinning this beautifully perverse noise together is the superhuman percussion of John French, who manages somehow to play in about six time signatures at once.
Highlights of this awesome double album include "Pachuco Cadaver", in which the Captain almost informally relates the tale of a horny old woman whilst the Magic Band kick up a groovy stink behind him; "Steal Softly Thru Snow", a tale of heartbreak and migrating geese set to gleeful runaway squalls of guitar; and "Orange Claw Hammer", a bizarre sea shanty.
When Beefheart runs out of fantastic, puzzling lyrics, he picks up his horn and lets rip. And boy, can he blow a horn....
To call "Trout Mask Replica" the boldest, most inventive album of the Twentieth Century is no exaggeration. If you haven't heard this album, I urge you to do all in your power to find a copy. And if you already own it.... utterly fantastic, isn't it?
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