Captain Beefheart closed out his recording career with Ice Cream for Crow, an album that reaffirms his utterly unique amalgam of Delta blues, wailing free jazz and rarified avant-garde motifs. This late-edition version of the Magic Band plays with jittery energy and razor-sharp precision, infusing the title track with down-home twang and executing astounding instrumental moves on “Cardboard Cut-Out Sundown.” Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) holds forth with sly desert-rat wisdom and crazed street-prophet fervor, adopting a spiritual tone for “The Host, the Ghost, the Most Holy O” and slipping some scathing political commentary into “The Thousandth and Tenth Day of the Human Totem Pole.” A number of these tracks were assembled out of pre-existing fragments — the lyrics to “Hey Garland, I Dig Your Tweed Coat” had once appeared as a poem, for instance. But whatever the ingredients, the album collectively crackles with instrumental finesse and word-drunk genius. Ice Cream for Crow concludes the Captain’s journey on an exalted note.