HALLOWEEN VOODOO WITH THE CAPTAIN, ANYONE?  

It’s not a massive stretch, or even a tiny one, to imagine Captain Beefheart as a jester-like storyteller but, on his final three studio albums, an extra gothic tone streaks the magic. Tracks starring bats, crows, ghosts, mummies and witch doctors are ripe for Halloween IF they’ve got a gumbo bizarro groove and voodoo flow – and these three definitely add a little swampy sauce to the Hallows’ Eve jukebox.

With a hypnotic, trance-inducing beat that replicates windscreen-wiper motion, Bat Chain Puller (Shiny Beast) is smeared with abduction vibes. Let your imagine flow and it’ll soon soundtrack a ritualistic fire dance stumbled on by some hapless rural wanderer … who will never be allowed to leave. Sax blowouts amplify the carnival bizarre and time slows to a paralysing taunt from a conga train of freaks and face masks, primed to assimilate any accidental observer.    

When I See Mommy I Feel Like a Mummy is the very next track on the same album and you couldn’t get a better follow-up if Santa fell into the wrong season and delivered it hiss-elf. Rhythmically, this track takes some beating – surely one of the band’s best. Everything is so locked in but so playfully loose as well. Don’t be taken in by Mommy Mummy’s immense catchiness, though – not today. It’s a trickster move. The oompah-ish rhythm signals jauntiness but when the sax and trombone squeal, like victims in your mangled mind’s eye, you know the lunatics have taken over. Cue a fade to black ending and a Wicker Man style fate. Doomed.

The final short arterial squeeze of this Beefheart triple is The Host, the Ghost, the Most Holy-O. Same sideshow, peoples. Try NOT imagining an incessant lurch of the undead. Impossible. A stuttering spiralling riff and whacked-out gang chorus are your captors while the Captain lords it up as the aloof MC.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, rock freaks!

Want more seasonal chills and thrills? Check this Celtic Frost oddity