Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) (studio album) by Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band

From Jboy56 10/10/2023 14:40

Weird but quite accesible,

Only 10th track 🤘🏻

From teague 07/19/2020 22:51

If you're accustomed to and love Captain Beefheart's sound and unorthodoxies, you'll love Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller). Fantastic arrangements, no instrument is too prevalent in the mix, it all blends into a beautiful mass. And if you're like me and saw synthesizer in the credits and said to yourself, "Oh no," I wouldn't be too worried.

Better than TMR, better than Safe as Milk. I'm sober, and I'm serious. This is like all the best of Beefheart's eccentrities, but in what is a very accesible piece of work. Lovely guitar work on most of the tracks.

Favourite tracks: Bat Chain Puller, Candle Mambo.. But you know what, most of the tracks are on similar level I think.

Although I disagree with you, I understand how you arrived at that conclusion. I was initially torn between including either this or the brilliant 'Doc At The Radar Station' in my list. However, after much thought, I finally settled on the former. I find this to be one of Beefheart's most uncompromising and intriguing albums. In my view, it's one of the most musically diverse and spectacular works the Captain ever produced. The album bristles with vitality and imagination that transcends the kinds of kitsche elements associated with cocktail lounge and salsa - assentuated by the prominent sounds of the marimba and trombone - of the kind you refered to. The album maintains a revolutionary cutting edge that's never far from the surface.

Following a relatively fallow creative period for the Captain, the master returned to form with this brilliantly uncompromising, acerbic and vibrant tour de force of an album, arguably his greatest record since 'Trout Mask Replica'. It was as though the post-punk aesthetic that Beefheart invented (which at the time the release of this album was now taking shape) had rejuvinated his creative juices once more. The sonic experience on this album is spectacularly visceral and it still sounds as revolutionary now as it did 35 years ago. A critical re-evaluation of this brilliant work is long overdue.