After the rule-ignoring stretch of pure avant-garde daring he’d arranged on albums like Trout Mask Replica, Lick My Decals Off, Baby, and Mirror Man, Don Van Vliet took a turn back towards the commercial — sort of. Clear Spot was Beefheart’s second and best stab at something more crowdpleasing and coherent after his first ’72 tide-shift move The Spotlight Kid, but it’s “accessible” only in the way that, say, his ’67 bizarro-blues debut Safe As Milk was. By all measures, it’s still exponentially weirder than anything else that deigned to call itself “blues-rock” that year, and more breathtakingly played than most (Zoot Horn Rollo gets nasty on guitar). Beefheart’s 99-ways-to-howl voice lends a constant reminder that his timbre always rings clear even when the words don’t (though his message has rarely been clearer; case in point, “Nowadays a Woman’s Gotta Hit a Man”). The Creedence-on-mescaline title cut, the shambling janky-leg boogie of “Long Neck Bottles,” and the runaway cowbell-virtuoso sprint of “Sun Zoom Spark” will clobber you; the surprisingly Hi-minded soul of “Too Much Time” and “My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains” will put the ice pack on your head.