‘Safe as Milk’: the record that sports Alison Mosshart’s favourite songs

Posted On November 17, 2024November 17, 2024

When your roommate from university, the clerk at the record shop, or the overly opinionated snob at a house party tells you to “check out Captain Beefheart”, you probably nod and say you’ll eventually get around to it. By comparison, when someone like Alison Mosshart makes the case for the Captain, the stakes feel suddenly raised and the task more urgent.

Mosshart, after all, has earned a level of admiration and insider street cred, not entirely unlike the Magic Band itself. Her own band, The Kills, has been going strong for 20 years now, and her circle of influence and collaborators include everyone from the Arctic Monkeys and Gang of Four to Foo Fighters, Primal Scream, and her 2010s supergroup the Dead Weather, featuring Jack White, Jack Lawrence, and Dean Fertita.

Back in 2020, during the dark days of lockdown, Mosshart appeared on the ‘What’s In My Bag’ video series produced by the folks at Amoeba Music, the famous record shop in Los Angeles. Forced to broadcast from her home instead of the aisles of the store, Alison shared a few recent albums and books she’d been enjoying at the time, including Patti Smith’s book Just Kids, Neil Young’s classic album On the Beach, and Jem Cohen’s Fugazi documentary Instrument. The one recommendation Mosshart was most effusive about, though, was Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band’s 1967 debut album, Safe as Milk.

A hugely influential record and arguably the most approachable from the dense Beefheart catalogue, Safe as Milk comes directly from the ‘Summer of Love’ but is more interested in exploring the Delta Blues than the Haight Ashbury. It’s impossible not to hear the rough-and-tumble garage rock stylings on this record directly colouring the much later sound of bands like the White Stripes and Black Keys (the Keys even named one of their albums, 2022’s Dropout Boogie, after a song from this record).

Mosshart is also a longtime fan and describes Safe As Milk in her Amoeba clip as “one of my all-time favourite records,” containing several of her “all-time favourite songs”.

Adding: “‘Dropout Boogie’, which is a song Jamie [Hince, of the Kills] and I covered way back in the day—I love that song so much. ‘Zig Zag Wanderer’… I mean, come on. ‘Sure Nuff ‘n’ Yes I Do’, ‘Electricity’… this record is just too good to be true. It really needs to be in your collection if you don’t have it. Everything about it is great [she pauses to collect herself]. Yeah, I couldn’t possibly love this record more.”

Another good reason to dive into Safe as Milk—almost implied by its title–is that it’s a bit of a cushiony landing into the sometimes unstable and unpredictable world of Captain Beefheart. This isn’t to suggest it’s a “normal” blues rock album by any stretch. ‘Electricity’, for example, is out there, complete with a theremin solo. Overall, though, the songs are short, punchy, crunchy, and fun, well suited for a low-budget 1960s drive-in movie. There’s even a 20-year-old Ry Cooder contributing much of the guitar work at the dawn of his own remarkable career.

Interestingly, the song with the most Spotify streams is probably the one least representative of the record. ‘I’m Glad’ is more of a soulful R&B number, creating a chill Young Rascals vibe with none of the distortion found in the tunes Alison Mosshart seems to prefer.

Anyway, give Safe as Milk a listen and see if you find yourself unavoidably discussing Beefheart with random acquaintances. Your transformation will be complete.

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