Day 39: Vox Explains Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica
Over the past 38 days, I’ve realized that using words to describe sounds isn’t easy. There are only so many ways to describe the sounds that an 808 makes before you start to lose your mind. Sometimes I just want to listen to music with a blissful sense of detachment, unworried about whether it’d be more accurate to describe a beat as “menacing” or “bragadocious” or “deviating from trap’s template.”
If you think about it, the album review is a vestige from a bygone era in the music industry. We’re blessed (and perhaps cursed) to live in an age when pretty much any music anywhere can be heard for free. Using words to describe a sensory experience is a pretty trivial exercise when listening to an album no longer costs you anything other than time.
But we are also blessed (and definitely cursed) to live in a time when a website like Vox assumes the noble purpose of explaining everything. It’s as if Ezra Klein (Vox co-founder and the personification of a lanyard-wearing wonk) is driven by a deep discontent with the idea that our universe is governed by random chance. In an effort to carry his company’s particular brand of internet journalism to its logical conclusion, Vox recently dedicated an episode of its Vox Pop Earworm series to explaining that which essentially defies explanation: Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band.
In a ten minute video brought to you by the 2018 Toyota Camry, Vox proceeds to describe Captain Beefheart’s staggeringly complex work of art in a way that leaves the viewer unsure if anyone on the production team had the stomach to sit through anything beyond the opening thirty seconds of “Frownland”.
Along the way, we hear from composer Samuel Andreyev as well as Susan Rogers from Berklee College of Music, both knowledgeable music theoreticians capable of breaking down the complexities of Don Van Vliet’s wilfully opaque understanding of composition. The video also borrows from conversations Andreyev conducted with Magic Band guitarist Zoot Horn Rollo (Bill Harkleroad) and drummer Drumbo (John French), who were responsible for shaping Beefheart’s piano musings (think John Cage without any musical experience) into something that could be played with traditional rock instrumentation.
The problem with the explainer format, of course, is that it’s forced to use simple ideas as a shortcut for understanding more complex concepts. In order to show just how intense “Frownland” is, Andreyev contrasts it with The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me,” held as a paragon of rock & roll simplicity. Even though they use a fancy sheet music chart and some nifty graphics, the main take away ends up being “Captain Beefheart had instruments playing in different keys and rhythms at the same time” Though one could see why it might be helpful to explain how the work clashes with the basic tenets of rock songwriting, it’s not exactly the kind of groundbreaking observation that one couldn’t have picked up on just by listening to the record. That’s not even considering that French later tells us that Van Vliet pretty much didn’t know what a time signature (and by probable extent, keys) was, let alone give a shit about them.
Conversely, the Vox format shows its value by demonstrating the album’s place in the context of a broader discourse about art theory. The narration contrasts sentimental art, which is the product of formal training and demonstrates technical mastery, with naive art, which exists purely to satisfy the creative impulses of its maker. Through this critical lens, Trout Mask Replica is a masterpiece because it “splice[s] together naive impulses into a structure.” This is where the piece does valuable work to explain Captain Beefheart’s magnum opus: by reiterating that these guys translated a dude banging on a piano and whistling into something resembling highly intricate, challenging music. Putting this information earlier on in the video (after the obligatory “hey this album sounds like trash but it’s actually really famous” intro) might have helped to tee up other elements of the piece that fall flat.
I’m also supremely disappointed that Vox makes almost no attempt to decipher the lyrical oddities strewn about the album, saying little more than that the song titles are funny. Here I was hoping to learn how “a squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag” explains why single-payer healthcare won’t work. Or how “Dachau Blues” is the key text to understanding Richard Spencer’s particular brand of anti-semitic white nationalism. I really think that “Moonlight on Vermont” might explain how we can empathize with economically anxious voters in the rust belt.
Another unanswered question is what purpose the branded content partnership with Toyota serves here. Is the 2018 Camry officially “Dali’s Car?” Are we to believe its driver-focused interior design and optional eight-inch multimedia touchscreen with a new Entune™ 3.0 system provides the ideal audio climate for appreciating the nuanced contrasts between “Hair Pie: Bake One” and “Hair Pie: Bake Two”? When Toyota says “Let’s go places”, are we to interpret that as, “restrict your band members from leaving your communal home and force them to practice for 14 hours a day”? I don’t know that answers will be forthcoming, but it’s a sign of the times that the rant from that one stoned friend or record store employee about what makes Trout Mask Replica so magical has also pivoted to branded video.
Ultimately, it’s perhaps Vox’ hubristic belief in the ability to explain anything that serves as their downfall here. Presenting Trout Mask Replica as something that can be understood is perhaps to miss the point of the album altogether. While one could argue that this piece helps open people up to the process of approaching an otherwise incomprehensible album, it’s also just as true that it deprives one of the ability to experience it on a purely sensorial level. Why count out beats and wait for key changes when you can just lose yourself in the noise?
