The received wisdom is that Captain Beefheart—the legendary howling bluesman, dada poet, visionary painter and composer—was at his shamanic peak in 1969, with his double-record opus Trout Mask Replica. But Rhino Records is working to muddy the waters of that theory a little by presenting this 4-disc set, featuring Lick My Decals Off, Baby (1970), The Spotlight Kid (‘72) and Clear Spot (‘72), the three albums that followed TMR. There are those who prefer the thorny clangor of Trout Mask to the slightly more polished and maybe incrementally more listener-friendly work of these early ‘70s records. But Beefheart’s incomparable otherness is on full display here. And these records demonstrate the degree to which the blues aesthetic could be bent and warped to fractured modernist ends. What will be of most interest to Beefheart-heads is the fourth disc in the set, which features previously unreleased outtakes and alternate takes, some, like “Dirty Blue Gene,” pointing back to Beefheart’s beginning—an instrumental version of this was included in some deluxe editions of 1967’s Safe As Milk—and “Little Scratch,” the music of which the liner notes fail to point out would go on to become the astounding “The Past Sure Is Tense” from Beefheart’s final album, Ice Cream for Crow. Other songs, like “Harry Irene,” would receive a full-band treatment later on Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) from ‘78. Newcomers to the Captain’s music can stew in the subverted backbeats, angular surprises and lyrical inventions. The disc of alternate takes serves to demonstrate just how completely intentional Beefheart’s sound was; even if the music managed to convey the energy of surprise and arbitrary jumble, every crazed accent, sonic smear, bizarre sonic pairing and lurch was part of his vision.