Album Review: Captain Beefheart - Sun Zoom Spark: 1970 - 1972

As great an album and yardstick as to how far “out there” music can go, Trout Mask Replica has become something of a curse for Captain Beefheart, as his other work is judged a lesser animal irrespective of its merits or the direction he was pursuing at the time.

Sun Zoom Spark is a four-CD romp through Beefy’s immediate post-Trout period, including three remastered, highly fertile albums. Less schizophrenic than Trout, but still reeking of the Captain’s trademark weird - Lick My Decals Off Baby featured a frisky Captain who’d “rather wanna hold your hand”, wanted to “swallow you whole” and “lick you everywhere it’s pink”. The comparatively slower songs of The Spotlight Kid were as mellow as the Captain ever got, albeit with hobbling rhythms and the occasional melodic deadend. A groove-laden beast, Clear Spot was arguably Beefheart’s most accessible album, featuring the throbbing Big Eyed Beans From Venus and the piercingly beautiful Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles, whilst from the disc of out-takes, the obscurity of Harry Irene – a mellow jazz number that Beefheart probably shelved for fear of accusations of “going soft” – is an extraordinary injustice now rectified. Sun Zoom Spark not only pitches some kudos to three overlooked albums, but provides some long overdue recognition to the fact that the Captain was a multi-faceted artist, who had more to express than a desire to demolish the boundaries of music.