Search - Fast N Bulbous :: Waxed Oop

Blabber 'n Smoke

Robert Carlberg | Seattle | 04/17/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Like their first album Pork Chop Blue Around The Rind (2005) this one is instrumental take-offs on Beefheart tunes -- "take-offs" rather than covers because the band makes no attempt to recreate the original versions (...except for a couple short vocals, which do). In their own way these spiky jazz versions are as reverent to the good Captain as Zappatistas or Ed Palermo or Grandmothers are to Frank Zappa. Both men wrote strong interesting melodies which reveal additional aspects in wholly new arrangements; both men were really more 'composers' than pop musicians (as arranger Phillip Johnson says in the liner notes: "We are not yet distant enough from the 20th Century to reliably assess the important composers... [but] my list would include: Monk, Ellington, Lacy, Weill, Ives, Herrmann, Nancarrow, Partch and Beefheart" - what no Zappa?)



While PCBATR drew heavily from Trout Mask, Waxed Oop reaches back to Safe as Milk and Strictly Personal, with the result that this album is a bit more straight-ahead and 4/4 and rockin' than the last. This isn't a bad thing as it gives the music an appeal quite separate from and independent of its ties to its Beefheartian origins. Since much of the music is reworked almost to the point of unrecognizability anyway, this ability to stand on its own as intelligent complex jazz-rock lends it an appeal way beyond the narrow range of Beefheart fanboys."