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.
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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