Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
Mirror Man
2026 Buddah

"Originally, Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band's second album was intended to be a double-album set called It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper. Although 1968's Strictly Personal has the same artwork that was mooted for the double album, it's a single disc. As part of the same post-Trout Mask Replica closet-cleaning that led to Buddah (the parent company of Blue Thumb Records, which released Strictly Personal) reissuing Safe As Milk as Dropout Boogie in the U.K. in 1970, the label released Mirror Man, the second disc that was intended for the Plain Brown Wrapper release. Recorded in November 1967 (an odd misprint on the sleeve claims it was recorded in 1965, when the band barely existed), the four lengthy tracks on Mirror Man are even more simplistic and primal than those on Strictly Personal. The key tracks are 'Tarotplane Blues,' a free-form jam in which Beefheart jumbles together the lyrics of at least half a dozen blues standards into a stream-of-consciousness ramble (adding musette and harmonica for good measure) as the Magic Band vamps on a slide guitar-based, two-chord groove for over 19 minutes, and the similarly expansive 'Mirror Man,' one of the key tracks of Beefheart's entire career." -- Stewart Mason, All Music Guide.