Safe As Milk review from Cheetah, 1967

Cheetah Magazine wrote on November 1967:

Safe As Milk is a total delight. It’s hard to characterise the group, because they are capable of sounding like anybody. But everything they do is permeated with a weird and fascinating sense of humor… There are some obvious parodies, like ‘I’m Glad’, which is like The Miracles’ ‘Baby, Baby’, but is ‘Sure Nuff N’ Yes I Do’ a take-off on one of the West Coast blues bands? Is ‘Zig Zag Wanderer’ a parody of The Grateful Dead?

It doesn’t really matter: their sense of humor (and it’s musical as much as it is verbal) isn’t anything as pointed as satire; it’s more a pervasive sense of oddness and absurdity. The lead singer contributes to the effect: by turns he whoops, growls, squeals, sings in falsetto or assumes a Jersey accent.

There is a specially printed record sleeve that captures the mood of the album perfectly; also a Safe As Milk bumper sticker. The credits are (perhaps intentionally) quite incomplete, but apparently Don Van Vliet is the guiding genius: he composed and arranged most of the songs.’

Thanks to Richard Morton Jack for sending this along.

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