Album: Captain Beefheart, Electricity (SPV)

This double-album of material culled from Beefheart’s early years presents him rather as one of the great instinctive white bluesmen of his era, with The Magic Band’s strut-stomp backbeat providing an infectious undercarriage for Ry Cooder’s slideguitar and the Captain’s gruff entreaties on “Sure ‘Nuff ‘n’ Yes I Do”, and the twitchy, theremin-laced “Electricity” demonstrating how he would push the blues into the future.

The filleting out of the weaker tracks from Safe As Milk has worked to its advantage, although follow-up Strictly Personal is less well-served by the removal of several tracks and the substitution of alternative takes, and the long, sprawling jams of the Mirror Man material do tend to over-balance the package.

Outtakes “Moody Liz”, “Big Black Baby Shoes”, “Dirty Blue Gene” and “Korn Ring Finger” offer compensation aplenty, however.

"Safe As Milk (Take 5)" from Electricity features in this month's Independent Audio Player. to listen. (Track used by permission of SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT (UK) LIMITED).

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