#Trout mask replica series

There are field recordings in between the music, with sounds of crickets and a plane passing overhead. And this is a new delight for Beefheart – a rough outdoor humanity blended with humour and a rich verbal vomit of imagery. It may be in hair pies (yes!) or in Frownland, but mainly it’s people, children and country men and women. In straightening out his music, he’s found some kind of religion. The Vox video precedes its defense with some negative reviews from the contemporary press, but this Dick Larson review from the time understood it from the get go, who writes about it as a giant step forward after Beefheart’s two previous, more accessible albums:ĭylan would sympathise with Beefheart’s ‘nature-and-love-trips’, but the Captain is faster and more bulbous (and he’s got his band).

(Maybe this is the gateway song for newbies?) (How many people, learning that Van Vliet was raised near Joshua Tree, nodded in enlightenment? Of course he was.) You want drug music, the album says…well then, this is the uncut stuff.Īnd then sometimes it really just hits hard: “Moonlight On Vermont” is relentless, with a corruscating guitar line and Beefheart worked up into a lather over “that old time religion.” He quotes Blind Willie Johnson, conflates paganism and Puritanism, and transcends both. For one, it’s in the proud tradition of European surrealism but also comes from a particular “old weird America” that produced some of our most brilliant nutcases. There’s so many other reasons to appreciate Trout Mask. However, only jazzbos dig on learning about polyrhythms. As Magic Band members point out, Van Vliet didn’t understand that a bass or a guitar did not have the same range of notes as an 88-key piano, which was Van Vliet’s songwriting instrument.

And then there’s the saxophone work, dropping in to squonk and thrash like Ornette Coleman.

Rhythm and lead guitar played two different time signatures each, and neither were easy, 4/4 rhythms. Drums and bass did not lock down a rhythm–they played independent of the others, with the bass even playing chords.

#Trout mask replica series

Vox’s continuing series “ Earworm,” hosted by Estelle Caswell, attempts to convert listeners who may have never heard of the album, by taking apart the opening track, “Frownland.”Īs Caswell explains, with help from musicologists Samuel Andreyev and Susan Rogers, Van Vliet melded blues and free jazz, and played it with a deconstructed rock band instrumentation. (This is actually a bit close to the truth). Don Van Vliet aka Captain Beefheart sounds possessed by Howlin’ Wolf trying to sing nursery rhymes on acid, and it often plays like members of the band are in different areas of the house with a vague idea of what the others are doing. There are no “hits.” There’s no foot tappin’ pop (well, mayyyyybe “Ella Guru,” and only because I knew it first as a cover by XTC.) It’s discordant. (And Zappa produced.) When I learned later that the house where a lot of this went down was located in the hills behind the suburbs of Woodland Hills, it made the insurrection of the album all the more magical.īut yes, it’s a hard one to get into. It’s a sometimes impenetrable slab of genius, wrought from endless sessions and then a short burst of recording, led by a man who couldn’t read music, was prone to fits of violent anger, but dammit knew what he wanted. I can’t say I regularly pull it out to give it a listen, but I know I’d never get rid of it. I’ve had Trout Mask Replica in my collection for years.