The Cap’n concludes the musical chapter of his career with a beautifully autumnal piece of desert art rock.
Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band’s final album, Ice Cream For Crow, capped a trilogy of post-punk era albums, starting with Shiny Beast (1978), which was re-recorded from parts of the unreleased 1976 double album Bat Chain Puller, and Doc at the Radar Station (1980). All were quite different, from the relatively lush production of the former to the dense production of the latter augmented by string synths. The sound of his last album is dry and brittle, as arid as the desert he grew up in. The original desert rock (well, that and Tishoumaren that came out of Tinariwen’s Tuareg music around that time). Meat Puppets had to be listening, as “Semi-Multicoloured Caucasian,” sounds like a template for their own brand of desert rock in the mid-80s.
The title cut is Beefheart’s most chooglin’ tune since he grew fins and booglarized us in 1972. Amazingly, it’s his first single release since the 60s. Which is crazy. He’s had plenty of accessible tunes, like “Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles,” “The Floppy Boot Stomp,” “Love Lies,” “Hot Head.” No wonder Beefheart was pissed. For much of the album, he sounds resigned and exhausted. Possibly his multiple sclerosis was already affecting him. But as always Beefheart makes it into great art, including the cover painting. The title represents the contrast between the black of the crow and white of vanilla ice cream.
Aside from Beefheart’s poetry and singular vocal delivery, what really sells songs like “The Host the Ghost the Most Holy-O,” “Cardboard Cutout Sundown,” “Skeleton Makes Good” and “The Witch Doctor Life” (“When the witch doctor life / throws his silent bones / Some are crowned king…”) is the dual guitars of Jeff Morris Tepper and Gary Lucas. They insert tension, melody and layers of melancholy with their inventive interplay. On “Evening Bell,” Lucas, harking back to Trout Mask Replica days, painstakingly transcribed the instrumental from Beefheart’s piano study, and it’s gorgeous.
The guitarists also serve up some grime on the fuzzed out leads in the second half of “The Past Sure is Tense.” “Ink Mathematics” sounds oddly familiar, probably due to his earlier influence on post-punk bands came full circle, and that song could easily have fit into the NY avant no wave scene. “81 Poop Hatch” is one of his best unadorned spoken word pieces.
Overall the atmosphere is more subdued than his previous two albums, and autumnal. At the time probably only his wife Jan knew it would be his last, his final “fuck you very much” before he went and made a real living off his paintings. In the visual art world, Don Van Vliet was highly respected. And yet his music was consistently undervalued and misunderstood, which is a god damn shame. The music video he co-directed for the title track was rejected by MTV for being too weird. Yet no heads exploded when they played it on Late Night With David Letterman, and it was used frequently by the Museum of Modern Art.
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