Fast 'n' Bulbous' second album serves up another set of
Captain Beefheart covers, this tribute given more weight than most such projects owing to the presence of guitarist
Gary Lucas, who actually played in
Beefheart's band in the early '80s. Almost wholly instrumental, the material tackled spans
the Captain's entire career, from
Safe as Milk's "Sure 'Nuff 'n' Yes I Do" to "Ice Cream for Crow." Those tracks and a few others (like "The Blimp") might qualify among
Beefheart's better-known songs -- if any of
Beefheart's songs could classified as well-known, that is. But the tunes selected cover a pretty wide gamut of
Beefheart material, relatively familiar and quite obscure, bluesy and far-out. The approach ranges from almost Delta-quality country blues ("Sure 'Nuff 'n' Yes I Do") to almost free jazz, with echoes of big-band jazz, hard rock ("Dropout Boogie" almost sounds like "You Really Got Me" given a horn rock arrangement in parts), and near-cacophonous weirdness; there's no way to make "The Blimp" anything like a normal song, for instance. The band plays the material with verve and wit, and while it's not necessarily an essential addition to the serious
Beefheart fan's collection, the light playfulness in many of the interpretations (and the absence of
Beefheart's sometimes grating vocals) might actually make these compositions more accessible to some listeners than the original
Beefheart recordings are.
Robyn Hitchcock takes guest vocals on the live acoustic blues "China Pig," wisely placed at the end and marked as a bonus track, as it's of inferior fidelity to the rest of the CD. ~ Richie Unterberger