BECK: STEREOPATHETIC SOULMANURE (1994)
1) Pink Noise (Rock Me
Amadeus); 2) Rowboat; 3) Thunder Peel; 4) Waitin' For A Train; 5) The Spirit
Moves Me; 6) Crystal Clear (Beer); 7) No Money No Honey; 8) 8.6.82; 9) Total
Soul Future (Eat It); 10) One Foot In The Grave; 11) Aphid Manure Heist; 12)
Today Has Been A Fucked Up Day; 13) Cut 1/2 Blues; 14) Jagermeister Pie; 15)
Ozzy; 16) Dead Wild Cat; 17) Satan Gave Me A Taco; 18) 8.4.82; 19) Tasergun;
20) Modesto; 21) Ken; 22) Bonus Noise.
Apparently, this was released on the
independent Flipside label just one week prior to Mellow Gold — reflecting Beck's strange fluctuation between his «accessible»
and «batshit» sides that kept going all through 1994. The most brilliant thing
about the record is its title, which more or less adequately reflects its
contents — however, this is also the
perfect album to get for those who are curious about Beck's darker side, but
are reluctant to engage in completism. At the very least, this piece of product
is a little better structured, and certainly much better produced, than Golden Feelings. I could even
understand somebody actually liking
it, rather than shrugging shoulders and asking, «...is this really what we were fighting the rock'n'roll revolution for?..»...
...which is not to say that I like it, not in the least. The huge
number of tracks is justified by their unpredictable diversity — we have
everything here, from acoustic blues to country to garage rock to electronica
to samples running wild, but, as usual, everything is so utterly experimental that
failures, by far, outweigh successes. There is a lot of ideas — and a brave,
but fatal refusal to elaborate on any of them. As in, something like ʽOzzyʼ will
start out as a moody acoustic rock piece, built around a sarcastic lambasting
of the title character (yes, I suppose it is that Ozzy: one can hardly err, with lines like "there's
mascara bleeding out of your eyes" and "there's a giant chicken claw
above your head"), but ultimately consists of a basic strum, an echoey
"Ozzy, Ozzy, Ozzy", and a mumbled, seemingly improvised recital. There
is a tiny seed of ironic greatness somewhere in here, but it is not given any
time to grow.
More or less finalized pieces here include two
plaintive country ballads (ʽRowboatʼ, ʽModestoʼ) that sound a little like Neil
Young parodies (and we could always use a good Neil Young parody, that's for
sure); the Sonic Youth-style noise-rock-fest ʽTasergunʼ, rather pointless if
you already know and love Sonic Youth; the pseudo-Piedmont blues of ʽCrystal
Clear (Beer)ʼ; and probably the album opener, ʽPink Noiseʼ, which has really
nothing in common with ʽRock Me Amadeusʼ, despite being subtitled that way, and
once again plunges us into noise territory, this time arguably reminiscent more
of the original Velvet Underground with its drunk guitar swoops. But even all
of these «accomplished» pieces wobble between «parody», «homage», and «drunken hooliganry»
rather than making some autonomous point of their own. They do sound sharper
and clearer than they used to before, enhancing the illusion of «accomplishment».
Wrapped around these pieces are interminable
snippets of acoustic (anti-)folk, harmonica and violin drones, warped vocals
imitating either Tom Waits or a blind pre-war blueswailer, chainsaws, news
reports, and assorted freakouts — if you really force yourself to pay
attention, one or two of these bits may come across as funny, but that's just
me being overtly optimistic. Furthermore, as if all this random crap (or,
Beckademically-speaking, «soulmanure») over the main body of the album weren't
enough, there are 16 more minutes of «hidden» ʽBonus Noiseʼ tacked to the end —
enjoy, and have a nice day.
I have a lot of fun listening to this album, and I think "Satan Gave Me a Taco" and "Thunder Peel" are great. However, there's nothing here that really suggests how well he can mix genres the way he does later on. I like this album, but it is objectively pretty bad.
ReplyDeleteNiceeeeee !
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