Beck: Morning Phase

BECK: MORNING PHASE (2014)

1) Cycle; 2) Morning; 3) Heart Is A Drum; 4) Say Goodbye; 5) Blue Moon; 6) Unforgiven; 7) Wave; 8) Don't Let It Go; 9) Blackbird Chain; 10) Phase; 11) Turn Away; 12) Country Down; 13) Waking Light.

A pox upon this whole goddamn «sequel» idea. Time and time again, artists keep falling into this ridiculous temptation — «hey, that masterpiece of mine was so great, I wonder if I can do ano­ther one just like it?» — and it's not even necessarily for the money. No, more likely it is because you happen to run out of ideas, and start looking for inspiration in your own past, sort of an incestu­ous affair with your own body and soul. What good can come out of it? Was there ever a self-con­scious musical «sequel» (excluding multi-volume issues that were initially planned as such) that managed to equal, let alone surpass, the original?

It took Beck more than five years to give us Morning Phase, and when he did, he advertised it as a «companion piece» to Sea Change. But that album needs no companion piece. It is an album about loneliness, for Christ's sake; how can an album about loneliness require a «companion»? And even though Beck's previous records showed some signs of stagnation, not a single one was directly billed as, or emotionally felt like a straightforward attempt to repeat the moods, textures, and effects of any of its predecessors. So is this a confession that Beck is finally spent, and that from now on he will be specializing in inferior re-writes of his past glories?

And here are the general reasons why you could suspect inferiority even before putting on the album. First, remember that Sea Change was actually written and recorded under the shadow of internal struggle and strife — an authentic «breakup album» where the songs were fueled by real feelings. That dark fire may have been artificially fed up, but its basis was real, and you could feel it. Fast forward twelve years, though, and the only internal struggle and strife that we see is from an artist who used to be on the edge of musical progress, and now feels himself somewhat left out, without a proper understanding of how he could be in the lead once again — mixed-up and confused. That could be an emotional basis for something, but why confuse it with the «dis­illusioned recluse» image of Sea Change, then?

Second, for some reason, Beck decided that the album would be self-produced — even though, last time I checked, Nigel Godrich was still alive and well, and even more, this was his regular turn in the «every second album» cycle. Beck did get some of the Sea Change musicians to play on the record, and, once again, entrusted the orchestration business to his father, but Godrich was absolutely crucial to the sound of Sea Change, dressing those songs up in ways that Beck's mind could never have come up with — and yes, he is very sorely missed on Morning Phase, which feels stripped and underworked without the Godrich touch.

Now here is the first revelation when you actually put the album on: it shares a lot of things in common with Sea Change, but in general, it feels nothing like Sea Change. The first and pro­bably best song, ʽMorningʼ, does not strike you with a bleak, secluded view of the world that ʽGolden Ageʼ proclaimed so solemnly. Its lyrical message is completely different: "Can we start it all over again? / This morning / I've lost all my defences / This morning / Won't you show me the way it used to be? / I've gone all around / 'Til there's nothing left to say / We've worn it all down / Into something that couldn't be said". Yes, you could try and interpret it as part of a dialog with a relationship partner, but in this whole context, wouldn't you say that it's basically a song about, er, uhm... impotence? Spiritual, I mean, of course.

A thin whiff of melancholy emanates from the song, but no desperation — Beck is being tender (falsetto in the verses) and submissive (chorus), not particularly happy, but generally coming to terms with his lot, «letting down his defences» indeed. There might even be some sort of early pre-nir­vana calm contained in the tune, what with its angelic harmonies and soothing piano chords bringing on a bit of a «New Age flavor», musically. This will be a serious blow for people who expect strong emotions or body-bending impulses from the man all the time, but if you are prepared to give the man a chance, ʽMorningʼ, as an anthem of calming down, humility and sub­mission, actually has a real point to make.

The bad news is that most of the following songs struggle to make a real point — or, more pre­cisely, they do not struggle to make a real point. ʽHeart Is A Drumʼ picks up the tempo a little bit to become a simple, unassuming folk-pop ditty whose hushed vocals, obscure lyrics, and ghostly background vocals presume a dig at «depth», but I do not sense any real depth — just a guy mur­muring some barely coherent nonsense to the mellow sound of acoustic guitars and pianos. No hooks to speak of, no musical textures to be astounded at, and what is it exactly that you are trying to get across to me, Mr. Hansen? What I see is just some grayish ambience, as if you wanted to capture some light and some darkness in the same bottle and give me both, but then you accidentally shook 'em up, and now it's sort of undrinkable. No taste.

This is pretty much the same reaction I get from everything else: a total feel of «middle of the road» where you really keep wishing he'd stuck to this side or that. On ʽBlue Moonʼ, the first single from the album, he sings that "I'm so tired of being alone", but there is no musical indi­cation in the song that he is alone, and if he is tired, it is more like he is tired of finding great ideas for songs rather than anything else. And song after song, we get the same unmemorable acoustic patterns, the same walls covered by simplistic synthesized or orchestral carpeting, the same mock-transcendental «woo-hoos» and «aaa-haas» from the backup singers, and, guess what, not even a single example of great usage of the bass guitar (dark bass grooves were an integral part of Sea Change, but not here).

Oh, it all sounds suitably nice, and it may even all sound suitably adequate to Beck's current state of mind, but it makes me sad and disappointed to see him in this state of mind. Even when he opts for a «grand» closure (ʽWaking Lightʼ), the crescendo effects seem boring and predictable, and, most importantly, devoid of real tension and energy — and this is the first Beck album in my experience where, after three listens in a row, I was unable to memorize any of the songs (with ʽMorningʼ as the only exception, and even that mainly because I really love that use of falsetto on the verses). Is it the kind of album that could be expected to subtly grow on you after a miriad of listens? But we are not living in an epoch where one would have time for that. And even if we were, this is Beck Hansen we are talking about, the guy who used to be the fastest gunslinger in the West. Sure, even the fastest gunslingers eventually grow old, but I was sort of unprepared that the aging process would be so quick.

If we judge the record on its own merits, removed from any possible context, it is inoffensive and generally pretty. But as a part of the curve, it is a catastrophe — a pretentious statement about having nothing to say that comes from a washed-up artist who really has nothing left to say, and knows not how to say it properly. Okay, «washed-up» is a harsh and undeserved word; maybe it is just a temporary blunder, and no sooner than Beck renounces this stupid idea of a «sequel» and starts bringing back in his usual batch of wonder producers, he may be able to get back on the right track. But the signs are not at all auspicious — when an album is as empty of meaning and feeling as Morning Phase seems to be, one can't help fearing that this particular thumbs down, the first one I've ever had the mispleasure of giving Beck, will be far from the last.

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Beck: Modern Guilt

BECK: MODERN GUILT (2008)

1) Orphans; 2) Gamma Ray; 3) Chemtrails; 4) Modern Guilt; 5) Youthless; 6) Walls; 7) Replica; 8) Soul Of A Man; 9) Profanity Prayers; 10) Volcano.

Well, even the best of us eventually get themselves cornered. After Midnite Vultures and Sea Change, Beck had nothing left to prove; after Guero and The Information, he had nothing left to recombine and resynthesize. It does not seem too surprising to me that, once Modern Guilt came out, he took his lengthiest break from new solo projects so far — five years without a fresh Beck album is definitely not something that the man's fans were looking up to. But the man is smart, and knows when to give himself a much-deserved break, letting that heavily exploited soil rest in peace and restore its nutrient potential.

Modern Guilt is quite short; not at all flashy or «assuming»; and basically gives us a faint pic­ture of a guy at a crossroads. I mean, what else would it be, if the very first line of the very first song goes "think I'm stranded but I don't know where"? If there is at all an overriding point to this record, it is simple enough — been there, done that, now what? Then this message just keeps on going: "modern guilt, I'm stranded with nothing" (title track), "beat my bones against the wall, staring down an empty hall" (ʽSoul Of A Manʼ), "been walking on these streets so long, I don't know where they're gonna lead anymore" (ʽVolcanoʼ). Nor is this dead-end problem limited to the singer alone: "down by the sea, swallowed by evil, we've already drowned" (ʽChemtrailsʼ), "there's a bottomless pit that we've been climbing from" (ʽYouthlessʼ), "what are you gonna do when those walls are falling down on you?" (ʽWallsʼ), and the list is only just beginning.

The music itself isn't quite as gloomy as the lyrical message, even if most of it is in minor keys. For variety's sake, the album was produced by Danger Mouse, instead of one of Beck's regulars, and so it neither has the kaleidoscopic urban fuss of the Dust Brothers, nor the strange cosmic vibe of Godrich. Instead, it is cast very much in a mid-Sixties art-pop style, which had always been one of Beck's favorites, but he generally used to bury those influences way deep under a coating of techno beats and synth loops. Here, only a few tracks (ʽYouthlessʼ, ʽReplicaʼ) are do­minated by modernistic percussion — most, with just a few tricks of the trade, would have fit in perfectly on old school garage-pop albums, or Pink Floyd ones.

Which is also the root of the problem: when Beck gets «stripped down», his retro-melodies are nice enough to the ear, but do not seem to be infused with just enough melodic genius to «matter» all by themselves, without the helping hand of a master producer, and Danger Mouse is either not able or not willing to provide that helping hand: his style of work, from what I have heard on the other albums produced by him, is to leave it to the artist — and Beck is exactly the kind of artist that should not be left alone in the studio at all, and definitely not left alone when he wishes to issue a serious statement about how all of us are going to a place that is far more dull and boring than hell or purgatory could ever hope to be.

While the album is on, it's really on, though. ʽOrphansʼ has just a light, sweet touch of the baroque, and of the psycho-mystical (somehow, I don't know how, the start of the "if I wake up and see my maker coming..." chorus, simple as it is, manages to trigger that mode). The orches­trated «chamber-music-hall» coda to the title track gives a good shot of romantic melancholia, ʽYour Mother Should Knowʼ-style. The flute-and-fiddle dialog on ʽWallsʼ gives another, but dif­ferent, shot of the same — and maybe it does make sense that the emotion of the song is not blown all the way up to high heaven, as some other guys singing about walls have been known to treat the subject. The harder-rocking stuff gives you some nifty basslines (ʽSoul Of A Manʼ) or fuzzy guitar riffs (ʽProfanity Prayersʼ), and the keyboards/strings combo of ʽChemtrailsʼ is qua­lity tripping material. Honestly, I cannot find any filler here (and with the album's total running length of 33 minutes, I'd be really surprised to).

Compared, however, to the majority of Beck's major label albums, the songs on Modern Guilt have less staying power — the grooves, the hooks, the moods are too, shall we say, «restrained», and additional listens do not show much additional depth to them (as it happened, in my ex­perience, with Sea Change, where each re-run of the tracks brought to mind at least several other minor wonders of Godrich's imagination). And, most important of all, you'd think that any album entitled Modern Guilt should leave you in the end... well, feeling a little guilty, perhaps? That is the kind of sentiment that an album like Arcade Fire's Funeral, if we are talking Beck's contem­poraries, easily provokes in me, but this album, in comparison, feels lacking. Instead of making me want to go out there and help make the world a better place, it just makes me want to give the guy a hug and tell him to maybe eat more vitamins every once in a while. Oh, I guess that last sentence automatically translates to a thumbs up, anyway, but possibly this is not the correct type of thumbs up that Beck Hansen might want from a reviewer. Still, what the heck — this is another good Beck album, making it an almost record-breaking (for this period) nine positive ratings in a row, and let us not forget about that.

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Beck: The Information

BECK: THE INFORMATION (2006)

1) Elevator Music; 2) Think I'm In Love; 3) Cellphone's Dead; 4) Strange Apparition; 5) Soldier Jane; 6) Nausea; 7) New Round; 8) Dark Star; 9) We Dance Alone; 10) No Complaints; 11) 1000bpm; 12) Motorcade; 13) The Informa­tion; 14) Movie Theme; 15) The Horrible Fanfare / Landslide / Exoskeleton.

Imagine yourself having lived through several years of your life, regularly exchanging a pair of bright yellow socks with blue stripes and a pair of bright red socks with white stripes to work. At first it's a shock, then it's a news item, then it becomes a running gag, and finally everyone calms down and get bored. What is the next logical step to take? Right-o — one fine day, you come to work, one foot clad in a yellow sock with blue stripes and the other one, nicely contrasting with the former, in a red sock with white stripes. All of a sudden, life has taken an interesting turn — struck out an exciting chord once again.

The analogy may be crudely generated and even more crudely stated, but it does convey my first impressions of The Information, an album that Beck, in accordance with the schedule, had him­self produced by Nigel Godrich, but which also, completely out of schedule, sounds like it really should have been produced by The Dust Brothers. For those of us who find it fun to derail the karmic wheel from time to time, this should sound exciting from the get-go — for those who think that some combinations should rather be left alone, The Information may become one of the most serious disappointments in Beck's career.

Personally, I think it works in more ways in which it fails. First, it is not to be taken too seriously — how, in fact, can you take seriously an album whose very first track is already called ʽEleva­tor Musicʼ? And if that is not enough, how about a direct clue from Mr. B. in person: "Put the eleva­tor music on / Put me back where I belong". Of course, most of his lyrics are nonsense, but every once in a while there is a hidden instruction out there, and it is our job to find it. Besides, the track does sound a little like elevator music — or, rather, like the musical imitation of an elevator in flight, with cogs grinding, ropes pulling, and little bells and whistles ringing and clanging as the floors swoosh past you in a typically Godrich-esque cosmic buzz.

The psychedelic strings, once again arranged by Dad, are back with a vengeance on ʽThink I'm In Loveʼ, but other than that, the song has nothing to do with Sea Change — it is fast, tight, poppy, pinned to a loud, swirling blues bassline (think Bob Dylan's ʽAs I Went Out One Morningʼ, if you need an earlier analogy), and dedicated to all the confused mindsets out there: "I think I'm in love / But it makes me kinda nervous to say so" is just another generation's way of saying "I think it's love, but I can't explain", right? They just got a little more sophisticated about it, but plus ça change... well, it's just a thought, not a criticism, the song is fun.

From then on, it all falls together in a synthesis that really combines the madness of Midnite Vul­tures with the dark sultriness of Sea Change in a way that Guero never attempted to. Tracks like ʽCellphone's Deadʼ, ʽNauseaʼ, and ʽ1000bpmʼ are formally «dance-oriented» (or just call it «body muzak» or something), but their emotional spectrum runs from philosophical gloominess to cynical anger — in fact, ʽNauseaʼ starts out with a stern acoustic bass rhythm that used to be a typical fixture of that highly underrated band, Morphine, and they were pretty much the epitome of late night gloominess in the 1990s. Yes, you may use this stuff as club fodder, but unless the rhythm is the only thing your ears pick up, pretty soon you will start scratching your head and wondering just what the heck is up — the party spirit is getting fucked over.

Of course, Beck has never been a particularly happy guy, but still, remember ʽDevil's Haircutʼ? Triumphant brass fanfares and all? Forget it. Every single song on here is morose, every single song captures that turn-of-the-century depression spirit, every single song is about some sort of bad shit or other, explicitly or implicitly, and Godrich has his hands full procuring the shit in question and stuffing it in all the empty slots between the beats (that's why it's «bad cosmic shit», not simple «bad shit»). ʽDark Starʼ, for instance, whose hip-hop essence is honestly hung out in space — Beck plays the space cowboy with some harmonica blowing as well, but it is the phased strings and keyboard arrangements that give the song its final flavor.

One possible problem with The Information is that it is overlong. This especially concerns its last track, a medley of melodies that run through a hip-hop section, another one that almost ap­proaches Aphex Twin-style IDM, and a final ambient piece — but even without this somewhat bloated and not too memorable ten-minute monster, the tunes share the issue of Sea Change (too much «sameyness» of the mood) without sharing its redemption factor — depth and power of raw emotion. On Sea Change, there was a feeling the man wasn't just dicking around, but was actual­ly saying something he needed to say and wanted us to hear; The Information never really seems to know whether it is making a point or is merely using a valid point (such as «this world is really coming to a sticky end») to provide Beck with a pretext for messing around.

In other words, ʽDark Starʼ is formally dark, but is it, say, ʽGimme Shelterʼ-dark? Cool — yes, by all means. The band, and Godrich in person, do a damn fine job fleshing out all the beats and all the beeps and bloops and gimmicks, and Beck consistently finds the right vocal hooks for most of the songs (just getting a little tired, so it seems, towards the end, or maybe it's just me getting tired). It's just that, unlike Sea Change, The Information does not have me convinced that the darkness actually expands beyond the theatrical. But that's all right. It doesn't necessarily have to. Besides, look at Radiohead — their darkness seemingly expands beyond the theatrical, and has it made a goddamn difference? Nah. Thumbs up, of course — if only for the simple, but effective producer-swapping trick that had us all fooled, and helped keep up the freshness of approach for an extra while. Oh, and good songs, too.

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Beck: Guero

BECK: GUERO (2005)

1) E-Pro; 2) Qué Onda Guero; 3) Girl; 4) Missing; 5) Black Tambourine; 6) Earthquake Weather; 7) Hell Yes; 8) Broken Drum; 9) Scarecrow; 10) Go It Alone; 11) Farewell Ride; 12) Rental Car; 13) Emergency; 14*) Send A Message To Her; 15*) Chain Reaction; 16*) Crap Hands.

Having exorcised the irritating breakup demon fair and square, Beck had also honored the al­ter­nation for­mula («one for the body, one for the mind»), and now it was time to get back to the hot stuff. Out with Godrich, in with The Dust Brothers: the man was becoming predictable like clock­work. Fortunately for us, the predictability only extended to the overall choice of producer and musical direction — in everything else, the man's brain was still popping out new exciting ideas like crazy. In fact, he hit his commercial peak with Guero: not a mean feat for a guy with more than ten years of an established musical career behind his back, and something that most of to­day's artists, even the «real» ones, could only hope for.

Some have described Guero as sort of a synthesis — another record in the wild, reckless, trendy party style of Midnite Vultures, but tempered off and sombered up with some of the moodiness and broodiness of Sea Change. This is not quite the case. Of all the songs on here, only ʽBroken Drumʼ, with its slow tempo, sad piano chords, and farewell lyrics, could have easily fit on Sea Change — but on Guero, it is more of an intruder, a «breather» providing some respite from the energetic beats and waves upon waves of noisy overdubs on the «dance» tracks. It is true that, in general, Guero goes heavier on distorted guitar riffs, grumbly vocals, and disturbing lyrics than Midnite Vultures. But none of these things demand to be taken too seriously. We really are back here to the world of «expensive cheap thrills», «trash-muzak» of the highest quality imaginable, although, in some cases, still somewhat intellectually stimulating.

To be sure, ʽE-Proʼ is far more of an aggressive, clenched-teeth opener than ʽSexx Lawsʼ ever was, with its funky drive and merry brass fanfare. Here, Smokey Hormel immediately kicks in with the heaviest guitar riff on the album, hearkening back to the «brawny» 1970s early metal scene, and Beck's arrogant "see me comin' to town with my soul... see me kickin' the door with my boots..." tongue-lashers almost reach out like an "I'm back in the saddle again!" sort of mes­sage, though, naturally, the man's lyrics in general never once begin to make literal or figurative sense, and it is only the choice of words that matters: "devil", "garbage" (of course! Mr. Hansen's favorite word in the English language), "rubbish", "snakes and bones", "poison", "wolves", well, you must have guessed already that giving candy to strangers with a smile on your face isn't exactly what the song is about. But on the other hand, it is also doggone catchy, in a happy pop sort of way, with all the "na na na na"'s providing the giggle factor — and, while we're at it, there is quite a bit of "na-na-nah-ing" and "la-la-lah-ing" on this, allegedly dark and broody, record (ʽGo It Aloneʼ, ʽRental Carʼ, etc.).

ʽGirlʼ and ʽHell Yesʼ were the other two singles, and they are quite dissimilar. ʽGirlʼ is essentially a Sixties' style sunshine pop nugget with modern production — some drum machines, some electronic bleeps, soon choked with traditional slide guitars — that cannot refrain from the temp­tation of a mildly shocking refrain ("hey, my cyanide girl", which could easily be misheard as "hey, my summer girl" or "hey, my sunny girl", but this is exactly what the lyrics sheet is for). ʽHell Yesʼ, on the other hand, represents the Dust Brothers in full flight, supplying cool hip-hop beats and samples while Beck is rapping about the delights of being serviced by a bunch of Japa­nese robots and guest star Christina Ricci is providing the occasional "please enjoy" and "sumi­masen". Yes, we have come quite a long way from Kraftwerk and The Man Machine — this sort of robotics now feels quite comfortable and housebroken. Sexy, in fact. Plus, it's always the little things — like the ability to make a working hook out of the expression "hell yes".

Once again, Beck's monster-like ear for intrigue and excitement ensures that there is virtually no filler on the album — everything has at least something to it, but my personal favoritism extends mainly to ʽScarecrowʼ (the ʽMixed Biznessʼ of this album, I'd say, with delicious disco bass of instantaneous toe-tapping value, and the chorus line about how "scarecrow's only scaring him­self" has become inexplicably wedged inside my brain for some reason); the aforementioned ʽBroken Drumʼ, a celebration of stately, but troubled serenity that might as well have served as the blueprint for Beach House's entire career; and ʽRental Carʼ, which is just a good fun driving song. Along the way, Beck also plunders Bo Diddley (ʽBlack Tambourineʼ), old gospel blues (ʽFarewell Rideʼ), and offers a friendly tribute to his Mexican friends (ʽQué Onda Gueroʼ), even if there is hardly anything Spanish, other than a big chunk of the lyrics, to this cool-struttin' chunk of new-school-white-bread R&B.

From a detached, historical point of view, Guero could count as a relative disappointment — it does not add anything «major» to Beck's legacy, just another large heap of small ideas on how to synthesize this and that and generate another squad of creepy, disfigured, but perversely attractive musical monsters, according to the practice already perfected on Midnite Vultures. But even if this is not necessarily «going up», neither it is, by any means, a downwards slide. Everything about Guero is honestly enjoyable, and the tiny added pinch of darkness also makes it less deca­dent and superficially silly than Vultures — quite in line with the general demands of the mid-2000s hipster crowds (and most of their young idols would kill for an album of such quality, any­way). Hence, the usual — a thumbs up with all due joy and reverence; and do look for the UK issue, which adds several bonus tracks that kick up even more rucus (ʽChain Reactionʼ is as crazy as the man ever got with that style, and more).

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Beck: Sea Change

BECK: SEA CHANGE (2002)

1) Golden Age; 2) Paper Tiger; 3) Guess I'm Doing Fine; 4) Lonesome Tears; 5) Lost Cause; 6) End Of The Day; 7) It's All In Your Mind; 8) Round The Bend; 9) Already Dead; 10) Sunday Sun; 11) Little One; 12) Side Of The Road.

«The Breakup Album». Where would we be without the concept? No Blood On The Tracks, no Rumours, no Adele, no Aimee Mann... no Tunnel Of Love or Jagged Little Pill, either, but the overall number of «efficient» breakup albums that immediately spring to mind is still larger than the amount of breakup albums with an unlucky correlation of substance and form. (Even Jagged Little Pill could have been so much better with a different musical philosophy). Even today, when it is normal for breakups to come at a dime a dozen, they may be traumatic enough to sti­mulate great art — so keep on breaking up, all you great artists, and go on behaving like male chauvinist pigs (if you're male) or like victims of male chauvinist pigs (if you're female).

Much to Beck's honour, though, his breakup album is fairly chivalrous. Legend has it that he caught his fiancée cheating on him with another musician, and if so, it was fairly lucky for her that her fiancé was not a Bob Dylan or a Lindsey Buckingham: Beck's «breakup album» does not put any explicit or implicit blame on anybody. In fact, for a breakup album, there are surprisingly few oppositions of «me» and «you» — most of the time it's just about «me» and the state of total misery that the «me» is experiencing. One has to watch the lyrics very closely to even understand that this is an actual breakup album. Actually, «misery» is not even the right word — «emotional numbness» is more like it, or maybe «deep-frozen soul»: Beck's intent here is to convey the feeling of confused stun and sensual paralysis that he must have undergone, and, as far as my own sensory receptors tell me, the intent is carried out fine.

For hardcore fans of Beck's «party face», the release of Sea Change, his bleakest, moodiest, and most genuinely serious record to that point, must have been like a bucket of ice-cold water, coming right on the heels of the non-stop-rave of Mid­nite Vultures. That did not prevent the al­bum from selling almost as well — and, of course, the critical press had a gala feast, because there's nothing like a Serious Breakup Album to give the professionally paid reviewer an easy subject to knock off a few paragraphs or pages. There were also murmurs, though, in some circles, that Beck had exceeded his artistic limitations — that «Beck the goof» was a far more valid pro­position altogether than «Beck the introspective singer-songwriter», that he lacked the proper clout, talent, lyrical gift, melodic feel, etc., for this side of the business. Both of these schools of thought still persist to the current day — so whose side should we be on?

My answer would be fairly simple. The songs, as such, that Beck wrote for the occasion, seem relatively pedestrian to me. Had they been issued as a collection of acoustic demos (the way they actually were recorded by Beck originally), Sea Change would probably end up deadly dull and ultimately quite inadequate to its purpose. However, the collective weight of Beck's output to that point showed well enough that putting together basic chord sequences was never a forte of Mr. Hansen — he usually preferred to «borrow» these sequences from somewhere else and then fo­cus exclusively on the form in which they were presented, together with one or more other people whose presence in the studio was vital. So why would Sea Change be an exception?

The plain truth is that Sea Change is not an album by Beck Hansen, the aspiring «anti-folk» ar­tist. It is an album by «Beck», a revolving-door-style conglomeration that, for the occasion, consisted of such primary members as Beck Hansen — the songwriter and vocalist; Nigel Godrich — the engineer, mixer, and producer; and David Campbell — string arranger and conductor, whose cre­dits run the unbelievable gamut from Carole King's Tapestry to Aerosmith's ʽI Don't Want To Miss A Thingʼ (people who can cause either great good or great evil on a whim are so fascinating, don't you agree?). Oh, and, for that matter, David Campbell is also Beck Hansen's father, but we will try to ignore that fact, lest unhealthy suspicions of nepotism darken our feelings.

Let us now take a closer look at one of the album's best numbers — ʽPaper Tigerʼ. As an «origi­nal song», it does not even begin to make the grade, resting on standard blues patterns (you can probably name half a dozen songs from J. J. Cale alone that ride the same chords). Where it does make the grade is its dynamics — the awesome tension build-up that begins from the very first second. The song starts out with Beck's dark-shaded singing, accompanied by the rhythm section only, with a very prominent bass walk. At 0:29, the electric guitar marks its grand entry with a jarring siren wail, and ten seconds later, it is joined by incoming strings. From then on, nothing really matters — not the basic sequence, not the monotonous rhythm, not even Beck's grumble, all the way to the final "there's no road back to you" — nothing but the incredible «organized freedom» with which Smokey Hormel's guitar and Campbell's strings roam all over that territory. This ain't Hollywood, this ain't the Chicago Blues Festival. This is free-feeling, unpredictable, but also completely accessible instrumental work that makes me jaw drop, and then pick up again with each new swoop of those strings.

Godrich's and Campbell's ideas for the use of orchestration on this album have been frequently compared to Paul Buckmaster's work for classic era Elton John, and there are some clear parallels, but on ʽPaper Tigerʼ and several other works the influences go deeper — all the way to 1967, I'd say, and the psychedelic use of strings on Beatles albums: ʽWithin You Without Youʼ, in parti­cular, and ʽI Am The Walrusʼ (in fact, I'd be very much surprised if the rising string pattern in the coda of ʽLonesome Tearsʼ were not a direct carryover from the ʽWalrusʼ coda — only on ʽWal­rusʼ, the strings were being used to blow your mind, while here they are rather used to overwhelm your mind, and yes, there is a real difference). Other analogies are possible as well, but the com­mon invariant is always the same — these are anything but «generic» arrangements. These here strings have living voices, and they want you to hear them. I think I do.

And it's not all about the strings, either. ʽGolden Ageʼ, opening the album, has no strings — only guitars and keyboards. But Godrich puts them at such a distance from Beck's voice, and uses such effects, that it genuinely sounds as if the man is singing to you out of a huge dungeon pit, where he has placed himself in his desperation: the voice being picked up by the wind, thrown and thrashed about the pit walls, and finally reaching the listener at the intersection of several dif­ferent air currents. Radiohead fans forgive me — but I have never once experienced this sort of effect while listening to OK Computer, not even at top volume on headphones. And consequent­ly, Beck's "these days I barely get by, I don't even try", which, under different circumstances, might have sounded self-pitying and pretentious, achieves maximum effect — not so much self-pity as mere constatation of the fact, cast to the thousand winds, giving us a man overwhelmed by fate, feeling like a bit player, caught up against his will in some impossible-to-understand sce­na­rio and not finding the strength to fight it.

This is just two songs, but everything on here works, one way or another. Even the most mono­tonous, static, near-ambient tracks like ʽRound The Bendʼ — where Beck's mode of singing is (probably quite intentionally) emulating the late Nick Drake — are redeemed by powerful «deep sea» orchestration, with waves of violins and cellos carrying, rather than drowning out, Beck and his minimalistic acous­tic picking. But ʽRound The Bendʼ is not typical of the record: most of the songs are actual «songs» rather than sonic panoramas — it's just that their dynamics usually takes time to unwrap. ʽSunday Sunʼ, for instance, starts out as a keyboard-and-sitar-driven art-pop song, then finishes with a noisy crash for a coda — the loudest, most abrazing moment on the entire al­bum, yet such is its overall effect that you might not even notice all the rucus, so smoothly it is integrated in the overall calm melancholic grandeur of the song and the entire record.

If Sea Change is not Beck's «masterpiece», it is only because there are too many different Becks out there to choose just one, not to mention all the different «Beck configurations» (on this one here, the honor belongs to Godrich and Beck Sr. as much as Beck Jr.). But as far as breakup al­bums go — and just imagine how many of them there have been in the last fifty years — this one not only sets out a unique goal to be conquered, but also does conquer it. Did the man really feel that sort of emotional numbness upon being dumped? Is he that sensitive? Could he really have written "I'm mixing business with leather, Christmas with Heather" one day and then "these days I barely get by..." the next one? None of that, of course, is important. What is important is how the music makes you feel — and, on my part, Sea Change makes me feel... well, let's call it «cold and drunk», or something like that. But not drunk enough to be unable to hold those thumbs up for one of the decade's greatest artistic successes.

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Beck: Midnite Vultures

BECK: MIDNITE VULTURES (1999)

1) Sexx Laws; 2) Nicotine & Gravy; 3) Mixed Bizness; 4) Get Real Paid; 5) Hollywood Freaks; 6) Peaches And Cream; 7) Broken Train; 8) Milk And Honey; 9) Beautiful Way; 10) Pressure Zone; 11) Debra.

With the dark brooding of Mutations out of the way, it's back to swing time again. A spin of the wheel, and Nigel Godrich disappears in smoke — don't worry, he will be back — as The Dust Brothers make a triumphant re-entry. This time, Beck's ambition is to make the party album to outparty all the other party albums. The samples are back, in a modest way, but for the most part, it's all about the beats, the hooks, and the arrogant, cynical, super-cool party spirit: Midnite Vul­tures is flashy, hot, and ultimately meaningless — but, like the best of those party albums, it's got enough witty, funny cynicism to it so as not to repulse the demanding listener.

Pretty much every song on here is fun in one way or another. They may not be deeply impressive (few «party albums» are deeply impressive in the first place, for obvious reasons), but Beck is not aiming for that — he claims to have perfectly mastered the art of, let's call it, «expensive cheap thrills», puncturing the listener's senses on a primal level without offending the brain. It's all a bunch of musical sexual acts, but, as he states himself on the very first track, "I want to defy the logic of all sex laws — let the handcuffs slip off your wrists". Midnite Vultures does have its logic, but it is its own logic indeed, not anybody else's.

I honestly have no idea of how many elements on the album come from Beck's own head, and how many have been taken from other places (but still reshuffled and re-glued in Beck's own head all the same). Direct influences that everyone mentions range from Prince to Grandmaster Flash to David Bowie to Kraftwerk to the Velvet Underground, and that is not mentioning minor touches like echoes of Elton John on the coda of ʽDebraʼ, or the occasional Beatlisms, or the occasional country touch here and there. In addition, some of the songs show that Beck had de­veloped a fairly impressive falsetto technique — and that, whenever he sings falsetto, he sounds eerily similar to Mick Jagger (just compare ʽDebraʼ with, let's say, ʽWorried About Youʼ). But none of that is ever a problem, because the important thing is to know how to steal, what to steal, and when to steal, and if Odelay could still be accused of an occasional abuse of power here and there, Midnite Vultures is a perfectly woven tapestry. If anything, one could perhaps shed a lo­nely tear for the pre-war blues strain — hopelessly lost in the fray this time. But at least the word "garbage" is still prominently featured in the lyrics (ʽPeaches And Creamʼ forms a delicious rhyme with "you make a gar­bage man steam", don't you think?).

On a song-by-song level, there are no highlights or lowlights, but, on a whim, I would particular­ly mention ʽMixed Biznessʼ as the «the shit» element of the album — certainly this sort of groove, democratically generated by guitars, brass, and vocals jumping from speaker to speaker, is as good as anything Prince ever had to offer, not to mention just as «mock-dangerous» ("I'm mixing business with leather", Beck tells us from the outset, even though the music itself contains no hints at a BDSM attitude — cybersex, perhaps, given the huge amount of electronic bleeps, but nothing that would suggest any glorification of physical pain). Then again, ʽGet Real Paidʼ might be even more fun — an almost completely electronic brouhaha that might sound like a dialog be­tween two androgynous robots in heat at first ("Teletubbies going electric", Beck used to say himself), before you understand that the lyrics are also poking fun at la dolce vita à la 1990s ("we like to ride on executive planes, we like to sit around and get real paid").

As the album moves on, though, the tracks get a little less beat-oriented and become ever more interesting in terms of melody and musical effects — for instance, the insane slides and bends on ʽPeaches And Creamʼ that make the song seem like Animal Farm Gone Berserk; or the psyche­delic vocal modulation ("we're out of controo-ool...") on ʽBroken Trainʼ, once again reviving the spirit of 1966; or the entirety of ʽBeautiful Wayʼ, reportedly inspired by The Velvet Underground and certainly consistent with the spirit of Loaded — slow-moving, steady, the only track on the album that moves away from head-spinning electrofunk, trip-hop, etc., but am I ever glad it's there even despite not fitting into the general atmosphere.

By the time we get to the «sentimental» coda of ʽDebraʼ, Vultures have already been long since balancing on the edge of parody, but ʽDebraʼ is probably the only time on the album where Beck officially makes that move — the absurdly exaggerated falsetto, the lyrics ("I met you at JC Penny, I think your nametag said Jenny..."), the exuberant brass arrangement, always happy to oblige with a mock-build-up, all of it reads like a final gesture: «Oh, by the way, if any of you here were going to take any of this stuff seriously, here's a final firm reminder to drop it». But as a good-natured parody on classic soul material, ʽDebraʼ is hilarious anyway, and a memorable and atmospheric conclusion, carefully wrapping up a non-stop-rave experience with some sit-back-and-relax laughter.

Of all of Beck's major label records, Midnite Vultures is probably the most «trashy», but even its title forewarns you of that — what else is to be expected from an album about «vultures»? For the most part, it's all about form, not substance, but this here is Beck at the peak of his «formal» abilities, so much so that the songs, despite being so steeply soaked in late-1990s technologies, sound as exciting and baffling in the next millennium. They really do make a garbage man steam, not to mention, more prosaically, thumbs up all the way.

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Beck: Mutations

BECK: MUTATIONS (1998)

1) Cold Brains; 2) Nobody's Fault But My Own; 3) Lazy Flies; 4) Canceled Check; 5) We Live Again; 6) Tropicalia; 7) Dead Melodies; 8) Bottle Of Blues; 9) O Maria; 10) Sing It Again; 11) Static; 12) Diamond Bollocks; 13) Runners Dial Zero.

This album marks a serious turning point. Before the rise to major superstardom, Beck would fluctuate between «lo-fi anti-folk» and «hi-fi sample madness», lending his post-modernist de­cons­truction talents to the idea of commercial success, and his depressed garbageman side to indie labels, so as not to lose his standing in the underground. Thus, for every Mellow Gold you had yourself a Golden Feelings, for every Odelay — a Foot In The Grave.

Mutations was originally thought of, I suppose, as more of a follow-up to the latter than the for­mer: the next installment in Beck's ongoing series of «reinventing the roots», but without the samples and hip-hop beats. To that end, Beck even had an agreement with Geffen that the record, as an experimental project with no commercial appeal, would be released on an indie label. How­ever, everything changed as Radiohead took the world by storm with OK Computer. Suddenly, post-modernistic irony was out of vogue again... suddenly, there was once more a certain demand on sullen, introspective singer-songwriters... and, suddenly, Beck found himself working with Nigel Godrich, Radiohead's producer — which, for better or worse, meant that coming up with another Golden Feelings was out of the question, unless the covert idea was to make Godrich die of a heart attack and quash the competition.

Whatever those circumstances were, the end result of this collaboration between the «intellectual garbageman» and the «master of technophilic melancholia» is an excellent album — and a great introduction to Beck for those who may be too put off by his experimental side to notice the true talent behind the «glitzy» and the «trashy» aspects of his work alike. Mutations is a very «nor-mal»-sounding, but a complex, diverse, intelligent, emotionally rich record — and, best of all, the actual songs are nowhere near as boring as that description might suggest. Just blame it on the inadequacy of the language, or the language user.

Predictably, Beck and Godrich still settle on old-timey blues/folk lamentation as the departing point — and even when the melodic backbone is more akin to post-war singer-songwriters than to pre-war blueswailers, Beck still finds the time to name the song ʽNobody's Fault But My Ownʼ, with a transparent throwback to Blind Willie Johnson (and not Led Zeppelin, of course). But now, other than being different through the application of Beck's lyrics and Beck's quite-modern per­sonality, they are also different through Godrich's atmospheric production ideas — and the man adds layers of surprising depth that was hitherto inaccessible for Mr. «Feel Like A Piece Of Shit» Hansen, but now somehow feels quite native to his vision.

The «Radiohead touch» is immediately observable from the first seconds of ʽCold Brainsʼ, a song that, with a little extra tweaking, could have easily fit on The Bends. Wobbly wah-wahs, sub­liminal distorted riffs, astral noises burbling in the background — without all these embellish­ments, the song would have been just another acoustic guitar / harmonica-driven folk meditation, a «poor man's Neil Young» offering. Instead, we get a sensory feast of a «space-folk» panorama that belies the song's lyrics: "Cold brains / Unmoved / Untouched / Unglued / Alone at last / No thoughts / No mind / To rot / Behind / A trail of disasters...", but, apparently, even in that un­moved, untouched, unglued state there is a hell of a lot of different stuff going on within those «cold brains» — if the song is not a melodic masterpiece, it should at least be the object of every producer's wet dream.

For ʽNobody's Fault But My Ownʼ, Godrich invites Warren Klein, who used to play for the Stoo­ges in the early 1970s and then moved on to studying Indian music, to contribute sitar overdubs — and, once more, turns a potentially pedestrian composition into a psychedelic «sea of droning» that illustrates the protagonist's «floating» state of mind so much more vividly than it would have with just an acoustic guitar and Beck's tired, reprehensive vocals. ʽLazy Fliesʼ takes the idea of an «intellectual country waltz» and throws so much in the pot — big bass drums, harpsichords, wah-wahs, Theremin imitations, fuzzy leads, whatever — that by the time you get down to the actual chords and find out that they are quite easy, you will have already gained enough respect for the song to be properly disappointed.

And so on, and on — this Godrich touch ensures that something at least can be said about each song regardless of whether it strikes you on a personal level or not: a classic bait for critical praise (and the critics did not disappoint). So as not to fall in this trap of spending too much time on an album that, after all, may not quite deserve it, I will limit myself to just a small handful of additional mentions: ʽTropicaliaʼ is a terrific mix of Latin rhythms and ominous jazz chords (al­though most people will probably remember it for the sneering grin of the cuíca, tortured by per­cussionist Smokey Hormel); ʽO Mariaʼ would have been perfectly at home as part of a sound­track where a grizzled Beck is playing honky tonk piano in a smoky intergalactic space bar; and ʽDiamond Bollocksʼ (included as a hidden track on some of the album's editions) is Mutations' blistering nod to hip-cool mid-1960s Revolver-ish rock'n'roll, but only as if Syd Barrett came to guest star on one of the tracks.

These are just a few examples, but even though some of the songs take a little more time to get into than others, I can find no serious individual flaws — nor do I have any problems with the concept of the album in general. Of course, Beck never took himself as seriously as Thom Yorke, so there was no chance that Mutations could ever be hailed as «the Album of its generation», but on the positive side, Mutations, unlike Radiohead, does have a sense of humor. But above and beyond everything else, this is one of Nigel's finest hours — his work on Mutations really goes to show that a truly great producer is always a great producer, no matter what sort of artist he works with (as long as the artist is generally talented, of course). Despite living in the same age, Beck and Radiohead are very different — yet Godrich was able to adapt essentially the same style of production to the essence of each of them without running into serious problems. (Seven years later, he would once again work a similar, but different kind of magic on Paul McCartney's Chaos And Creation In The Backyard).

Do keep in mind that the «Beck/Godrich» way of working is very different from the «Beck/Dust Brothers» way of working — for practical purposes, these are almost two different Becks, where it is fairly easy to rave over one and get bored with the other, or to be enchanted by the latter and disgusted by the former, depending on whether you came here from Beastie Boys Wasteland or Radio­head Sanitarium. Then again, whatever be the situation, there is always a Blind Willie John­son, blindly peeking out from behind the backs of both — and a dark alley with a smelly garbage can. This one, however, is located somewhere on Aldebaran, which is all the more reason to give it a thumbs up, and hope someone out there has a telescope capable of detecting it.

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Beck: Odelay

BECK: ODELAY (1996)

1) Devil's Haircut; 2) Hotwax; 3) Lord Only Knows; 4) The New Pollution; 5) Derelict; 6) Novacane; 7) Jack-Ass; 8) Where It's At; 9) Minus; 10) Sissyneck; 11) Readymade; 12) High 5 (Rock The Catskills); 13) Ramshackle; 14*) Computer Rock.

Looking back on the huge amount of lavish praise that Odelay had garnered upon release — for many a critic, the album was almost like a super-symbol of the mid-1990s — the record seems to have taken more of a beating recently, still standing the test of time, but not without bloodstains and lacerations. Judging by various «amateur» opinions on the Web, what seemed trendy, auda­cious, boundary-melting, and just plain «hip» at the time slowly comes to be regarded as a tempo­rary, and somewhat silly, triumph of cool form over thin substance. As a new wave of artists, inspired by Beck's genre mish-mashing, made people get over the initial excitement, more and more of them began to realize that... yeah, cool is cool, but does Odelay really have all that re­play value? Is there, like, a message in there? How has it really enriched humanity and all?

Admittedly, there is nothing shameful or unethical in the want to take Odelay down a peg or two. It captured one of those rogue «Zeitgeists» which one never really knows how to treat properly — by appeasing them or flogging them away — but it does not really have the kind of emotional depth that is usually required for a de-luxe pedestal: if there ever was the slightest chance of Beck wearing the «Most Important Artist of the Decade» crown, the release of OK Computer the next year would bury it forever, branding him as one of the industry's leading tricksters instead. And now, way too often, the actual tricks seem dated and not even particularly curious.

But it is also unwise to go all the way to the other side of the pole — whatever be the case, Ode­lay is not just an experimental hackjob carried out by a no-goodnik with too much free time on his hands. It is a logical follow-up to Mellow Gold, carrying Beck's penchant for genre-fusing to its culmination, and it certainly does not lack emotional content — it merely conceals the troub­led singer-songwriter behind a thick wall of overdubs, and it may be a little difficult to ex­tract him from behind that wall if one is not familiar with Beck's history of trouble and toil. If anything, this is the proper use of Beck's early indie albums: they may be technically flawed on their own level, but simply being aware of them helps gain a deeper affection for Odelay.

And beyond all that bullshit, the album is just a fairly solid collection of inventive songs. Already ʽDevil's Haircutʼ establishes the basic standard — take an old songwriting technique, merge it with a modern beat and sampling style, throw in a pinch of Beck's own «murderous depression» image, and you got yourself a readymade contemporary classic. It does not matter that the song is way too repetitive (you don't usually put it to all those hip-hop tunes that Beck draws his influen­ces from, so how could he be guilty?) — all it takes is a jarring fuzz riff, some haughty, mur­mured vocals transplanted all the way from psychedelic 1967, and a final surprising touch of swampy harmonica. Or perhaps the final touch are the lyrics. "Everywhere I look there's a dead end waiting" — if this were Robert Smith, the accompanying music would be suicidal, but Beck is simply way too cool, calm, and collected to let his music lead you into depression. ʽDevil's Haircutʼ is loud, noisy, screamy, and impossibly urbanistic — the accompanying video, with Beck strolling through various locations in NYC with a boombox under his arm, matches the atmosphere of the tune to perfection.

What gradually emerges from the next few songs is... well, I'd say, a brave stab at a «new Dylan» for his generation. ʽLord Only Knowsʼ, whose mysterious final chant gave the album its title, starts off with a hoarse scream, some feedback, a false start (already a bit of Dylanish noncha­lance), then turns into upbeat country-rock, set to some angry, accusing, but generally meaning­less lyrics directed at everyone in general and no one in particular. Unfortunately, Beck is no­where near Dylan in terms of vocal performance — most of his deliveries are fairly monotonous and by-the-book, as he treats each following word exactly like the one that preceded it. Most of the work is going into spicing things up — for instance, with a little bit of Steve Vai-style guitar arpeggios instead of a «normal» bridge, and suchlike. It's unpredictable enough to keep your attention in a steady hold, but for the first listen only: later on, there is a chance that many of the «intrusions» will become obnoxious, being so out of place and all.

Still, the basic structures are consistently fun, no matter how derivative they are — ʽThe New Polutionʼ revives the old ʽTaxmanʼ / ʽStart!ʼ progression with an added «astral» flavor (Eastern organ, Mellotron, acid sax licks, you name it); ʽDerelictʼ is like a flat-out musical opium den, with smelly smoke rising from the speakers; ʽJack-Assʼ begins as a tough'n'tender ballad in Lou Reed style, then ends with some atonal guitar and genuine jackass noises; ʽSissyneckʼ is just simple, catchy country-rock with a hyperdriven rhythm section and a pop chorus that is every bit as unforgettable as it is bizarre ("I'm writing my will on a three dollar bill in the evening time"? he must know that a "three dollar bill" is, among other things, a euphemism for a flaming homo­sexual, right?); and so on.

I do not find as much joy in the more openly hip-hoppish numbers on the album — ʽHigh 5 (Rock The Catskills)ʼ and ʽWhere It's Atʼ, both of them surprisingly «normal» celebratory odes to the joys of DJing, might appeal to Beastie Boy fans, but on the whole, they seem to have more to do with The Dust Brothers (who co-produced the album with Beck) than with the musical and atmospheric personality of Mr. Hansen. I certainly prefer him when his passion for beats, samples, and rapping plays second fiddle to his passion for «Ye Olde Urbana Americana», rather than when it is thrown into the limelight — and it isn't even my anti-hip-hop bias speaking, it's just that ʽSissyneckʼ and ʽWhere It's Atʼ aren't really destined for necking on the same album.

But this is just a minor personal quibble, which can be easily disregarded. The major quibble is that Odelay may not be one of the greatest albums ever made — which is a quibble with the cri­tical world rather than Beck himself, who cannot be blamed for the headlines. It's just high qua­lity hipster music that will be forever representative of its own time and space: which wasn't the best of times and spaces, perhaps, but definitely not the worst, either. It may not deserve all of its reputation, but it certainly deserves its thumbs up, no reservations applied.

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Beck: One Foot In The Grave

BECK: ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE (1994)

1) He's A Mighty Good Leader; 2) Sleeping Bag; 3) I Get Lonesome; 4) Burnt Orange Peel; 5) Cyanide Breath Mint; 6) See Water; 7) Ziplock Bag; 8) Hollow Log; 9) Forcefield; 10) Fourteen Rivers Fourteen Floods; 11) Asshole; 12) I've Seen The Land Beyond; 13) Outcome; 14) Girl Dreams; 15) Painted Eyelids; 16) Atmospheric Conditions; 17) It's All In Your Mind; 18) Feather In Your Cap; 19) Whiskey Can Can.

Beck's last original release on an indie label is arguably the most accessible of his «experimental snippet» collections — where one can spot talent and intelligence without too much irritation. Or, to put it differently, where Beck's pissed-off «anti-folk» hooliganry, generated by one too many downers, slightly abates in favor of pensiveness and seriousness. Not to mention that it is also the best produced record in the whole group: no more of that «bedroom aura» which, in retrospect, feels so unnecessarily pretentious.

Which is not to say that the album is a «must hear» — this is the kind of stuff that helps you put Beck in a larger context and understand where it all comes from, but certainly not the kind of stuff that could help put the guy in any «rock'n'roll hall of fame», officially or informally. Just sixteen more snippets, ranging from acoustic blues and folk to rowdy noisefests — carrying on with the post-mo­dern take on Neil Young. The material was recorded before the release of Mel­low Gold, so it does not yet bear the seal of an emerging superstar, but it is quite possible that, at this point, Beck was still testing out several roads to follow, and, had Mellow Gold not proven to be such an overwhelming success, we could have yet witnessed the guy burying his samplers and going on to pursue this strange path of trying to update ye olde Americana for the 1990s, rather than simply get inspired by some of it.

The guy with the somewhat vacant stare to the left of Beck on the album sleeve is hardly one of the nobodys: Calvin Johnson, one of the seminal figures in American underground, father of Beat Happening, Go Team, Dub Narcotic Sound System, and other projects, who acted as producer for this album, provided his own label's services to release it (K Records) and also co-wrote and co-sang the final track (ʽAtmospheric Conditionsʼ) in his trade­mark bass drone. This is probably an important «legacy link», but on the whole, the album certainly does not look like an equal parts collaboration — it's the Hansen show all along.

I am not sure how much actual composing was involved here: quite a few of the songs are no­thing but traditional old tunes, set to new lyrics — ʽFourteen Rivers Fourteen Floodsʼ, for ins­tance, is based on the old ʽSittin' On Top Of The Worldʼ / ʽYou Gotta Moveʼ set of chords, sliding and vibrating in deliciously authentic Thirties fashion; ʽI've Seen The Land Beyondʼ is a guessable variation on the Woody Guthrie style; ʽPainted Eyelidsʼ never goes beyond a standard up-and-down rockin'-horse country rhythm, and so on. In any case, the deal is not really about finding new sounds — it's all about relocating Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, and Jimmy Rodgers away from crossroads, plantations, and railway stations to the big modern city, without improving the conditions. ʽPainted Eyelidsʼ, in typical Beck fashion, continues to tell us about trash bags, sewer drains, chemicals, and debris — only this time, with clean sound, well-tuned acoustic guitars and pleasant, dreamy singing styles.

Some of the tunes eventually forget about their pre-war commitments and veer off into grim indie pop territory — sometimes, with pretty cool results, as it happens on ʽAssholeʼ, a particularly good one because it has what I call the «Lennon effect»: a seemingly trivial melody that is never­theless delivered with a subtle intensity and then resolved into some sense-shocking hook, like a discharge of slowly accumulating electricity, in this case, Beck's subliminal "she'll do anything, she'll do anything..." turning round and slapping you in the face with "...to make you feel like an asshole". These turns of events are quite common on Lennon's acoustic material, and here, Beck lets us know that he can have the same touch if he just keeps focused on it.

The screechy / noisy numbers on the album are, in comparison, rather scant — ʽBurnt Orange Peelʼ is a fuzzy comic-rocker à la Pixies, ʽZiplock Bagʼ is ugly noise-blues with harmonica blown through Lucifer's own sonic filter... and that's about it, actually, unless we also throw in a few dissonant overdubs on ʽAtmospheric Conditionsʼ. They seem mostly to have been placed here for diversity's sake, so that the album couldn't be that easily pigeonholed. But no worry: even without the electric numbers, it is not easy to place it into any one particular category.

Despite all the obvious shortcomings (or, at least, all of its obvious aspects that could be easily called «shortcomings» by those who think that the real Beck begins with Mellow Gold and con­tinues straight on with Odelay), I think the record deserves a thumbs up. At the very least, it could, and maybe even should, be taken seriously. Stereopathetic Soulmanure was still «punk» in spirit — and, consequently, quite contradictory, because Beck Hansen's guts aren't really punk. This stuff, on the contrary, does seem to stem directly from the guts. Sure, it is more about an in­dividual artist's guts than about shaking up the musical world of the mid-Nineties, but it should usually be an interesting venture — peek into the guts of an artist who dared to try and shake up the musical world all around him.

PS: Additionally, the idea that the album must have meant much more to Beck than Golden Fee­lings or Soulmanure is indirectly confirmed by its having been re-released in 2009 in the form of a «deluxe» edition, with an overwhelming sixteen extra tracks from the same sessions — I have not heard them, and I do not really believe they could significantly swerve one's judgement into either direction, but the very fact that Beck took such good care of this part of his legacy is well worth noting.

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Beck: Mellow Gold

BECK: MELLOW GOLD (1994)

1) Loser; 2) Pay No Mind (Snoozer); 3) Fuckin With My Head (Mountain Dew Rock); 4) Whiskeyclone, Hotel City 1997; 5) Soul Suckin Jerk; 6) Truckdrivin Neighbors Downstairs (Yellow Sweat); 7) Sweet Sunshine; 8) Beercan; 9) Steal My Body Home; 10) Nitemare Hippy Girl; 11) Mutherfuker; 12) Blackhole.

One theory that explains the surprising commercial success of Mellow Gold is simply that its attitude appealed so much to the new generation of slackers all over the US and worldwide, they went ahead and made it into their personal Bible of 1994. There is, however, a big hole in that theory — namely, where did all those slackers get the money to buy the album? Naturally, there are a hundred thousand different ways for a slacker to solve his financial problems, but then... would not being able to afford Mellow Gold really count as a genuine financial problem, in need of an immediate solution? Who knows, really.

There is another theory, though — one that also acknowledges the purely musical merits of Mel­low Gold, and states that Beck's meticulous fusion of the archaic and the contemporary, achieved here in a most understandable and accessible manner, was so unprecedented and intriguing that there was simply no way it could not transform the guy into the hottest new thing around town. Let's face it: even though, once we get to the bottom of it, country blues and hip-hop ultimately stem from pretty much the same source (lower class Afro-American layer, that is), it isn't every day that somebody proposes to knock 'em back together in a single package — all the more sur­prising that it took a hunk of «pseudo-white trash» to carry out that operation.

Allegedly, Beck himself was of no high opinion of ʽLoserʼ, which he only reluctantly submitted to release as a single — to him, this was a mediocre experiment like many others, maybe just a little more elaborate than the majority of his «stereopathetic soulmanure» products. But he was wrong — unlike most of these products, ʽLoserʼ had the golden touch for everybody. Critics loved the unholy union of slide guitars (roots!), sitars (psycho!), and hip-hop rhythms / vocals (modern cool!), and simple fans were awestruck with the chorus: "I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?" was so poignant... and «sing-along-able»: readymade national anthem for a small army at least, or maybe, who knows, even a large one.

As ʽLoserʼ deservedly jump-started the process of turning Beck from street rat to major star, he must have warmed up to its nature — because, frankly speaking, ideology-wise most of Mellow Gold, his proper major label (Geffen) debut, sounds like variations on the same topic: combining elements of roots-rock music, psychedelia, and «modern street rhythmics» to form a soundtrack for losers, outcasts, and downshifters the world over. «Slacker music», come to think of it, is not a very good term — Beck himself has always hated it, rightfully pointing out that he was never a «slacker» as such. «Urban loser music» is more like it, although we would also need to throw in Beck's little fetish of mysophilia as well: few records have more mentions of toilets, manure, scum, puke, etc. per square inch than Mellow Gold allows itself in fourty-five minutes. Urban losers come in different sorts and sizes; Beck's version is a particularly smelly one.

Not that any of us should mind, since, on the whole, Mellow Gold's basic intention is never one of grossing you out — that can happen, sometimes, as an unintentional, or desirable, side effect, like it does in Pulp Fiction (to which Mellow Gold, from certain angles, relates like its musical twin from the same year), but above everything else, it is a musically interesting construction, stylistically uniform and variegated at the same time. Hip-hop rhythms, rapping, and sampling frequently make part of it, but they do not lie in the foundation — which is strictly occupied with chord sequences learned, borrowed, or based on Beck's knowledge of the rustic tradition; so, in a way, he is doing here much the same thing as Dylan was doing back in 1965, rebooting the old franchise in a manner fit for the moods and airs of thirty years forward.

In terms of immediate memorability, it is the loud, obnoxious numbers that steal the show — ʽLoserʼ is an impeccable opener, but then there is also ʽSoul Suckin' Jerkʼ (continuing with the analogy, "I ain't gonna work for no soul suckin' jerk, I'm gonna take it all back and I ain't sayin' jack" is the 1994 equivalent of "I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more") — great combo of swampy acoustic guitar and harmonica with rudely distorted fuzz bass on that one; ʽSweet Sun­shineʼ, which fits its title very well if one interprets «sunshine» as «nuclear explosion flash» (the instrumental part is like a very bad, very perverse acid trip); and a new, improved, beefed up ver­sion of ʽMutherfukerʼ that now sounds very much like stoner rock with a screwdriver up its ass, as spontaneously as that simile is generated.

Then, over time, one also gets warmed to the quieter, subtler stuff — the «anti-depressed» (so called because they should be expected to sound depressing, but in reality sound like the singer has already transcended that silly, pesky emotion) acoustic ballads like ʽPay No Mindʼ, ʽNitemare Hippy Girlʼ, ʽWhiskeycloneʼ, or the solemn, quasi-Eastern album closer ʽBlackholeʼ. There is no compositional genius here, but the hooks and moods are quite efficient, without any traces of taking themselves too seriously or exercising any self-pity, but still aspiring to some importance. ʽBlackholeʼ, in particular, almost invites you to meditate to its rhythmic waves of guitars and strings, and then you realize that a large segment of the album is, indeed, meditative in nature, even some of the heavier numbers — because, after all, what is a sla... er, urban loser supposed to do other than just drift away into the depths of his subconscious and hope that he might find peace of mind is waiting there, to quote another famous «slacker»?

All in all, Mellow Gold is one of those records that do provoke different reactions depending on the number of times you have listened to them, the context in which you heard them, the mood in which you find yourself at the moment, and, of course, the ability to judge avantgarde artistic statements both on their own terms and on common grounds — good news for me is that I actu­ally happen to like the record not just because it is «weird» or «innovative», but because it shows a streak of very individualistic, very unusual wisdom. As a collection of great individual songs, it may not be Beck's finest hour; but as one of the most important cohesive albums of the decade, it just might be. At the very least, it more than deserves its exalted thumbs up.

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