Captain Beefheart – ‘Safe as Milk’
When Don Van Vliet was a toddler, he took his sculpting hobby so seriously that his parents had to post his dinner under the doorsill of his bedroom-come-studio. So, it’s perhaps no surprise that when he eventually formed Captain Beefheart, refinement wasn’t exactly his forte. Safe as Milk is a debut that exhibits pure brilliance in abundance, so munificent that it threatens to upend it. Alas, it also remains frantic and inventive enough to ward that fate off.
“I was born in the desert,” the record begins on ‘Sure ‘Nuff ‘n’ Yes, I Do’ as an accompanying slide guitar whisks up an image of a stark western horizon. It’s a characterful 29 seconds that establishes Vliet’s distinct and, frankly, fantastic, growl-come-yodel vocals. It also sets his knack for imagery in motion. But the fact that it lasts for less than half a minute before erupting in a honky tonk rumble that swirls the blues into a rainbow of colour is perhaps most telling of what’s to come.
Throughout the record, that initial desert motif is indicative of the band’s Los Angeles identity. To some degree, Safe as Milk is simply a gruff R&B record. Still, it also embodies the chaotic collision of cultures, anarchy and gold-kissed environs that truly typify the true heart of the City of Angels. Captain Beefheart is right in amongst that. They hiss with the mutinous vigour of a wild art collective, subverting the norms of pop structure.
However, it’s a debut, so they also do this in a piecemeal manner over the course of a record that works more as a showcase of what they can do rather than what they should do routinely. You’re often awed by the strange odyssey of Safe as Milk, but you can rarely truly settle into it and be enraptured by its subtle psychedelic twist on R&B.
True to the artistic tenets that Vliet had showcased even when he was still in short trousers, this is less of a succinct, coherent album and more of an art exhibition put on by a wild renaissance man. So, while its messiness might muddy the water, precluding the record from being a masterpiece, the unbridled creativity also ensures that Safe as Milk is sincere and delightfully successful in offering the invigorating sonic assault that the talented band clearly intended.
However, in a record full of its own contradictions, it is perhaps at its best when it is at its simplest – when it achieves refinement. This comes to the fore with ‘I’m Glad’. This sweet Motown doo-wop is a stunning song. It provides the perfect twinkling bed of sounds for Vliet to illuminate the strength of his vocals as he blares out a performance that seems like it was cut while he sunk to his knees in a flood of tears as he tapped into his latest character.
It just so happens that the previous character was a madman bawling nonsense on ‘Dropout Boogie’, which means that you might miss the emotional opus of ‘I’m Glad’ if you’ve been sideswiped by what came before. There is a consistent bluesy texture that marries the odd buffet of the record, as well as a rich twangy guitar tone that hints at psychedelia swirling beneath in a truly inventive and groovy whirl. Still, it always feels more like an impressive portfolio that sounds pretty amazing, but for some reason, you know you won’t hire to fill the position of the next ‘beloved’ album in your life.
Safe as Milk is always close to being a masterpiece, but it misses a knowable identity, a facet needed to give a record the emotive edge that makes it beloved. It’s impressive at every turn, but there are a few too many turns to get comfortable with, yet it’s not quite a wild rollercoaster either.
