BECK

In my book, Beck is one of the most controversial figures of the nineties music scene. Some look up to him as some sort of semi-legend, an all-too-rare contemporary genius, a post-modern Prince for the nineties, and so on and so forth. Others obviously get a little offended by such lauding of, what they see as, no more than a post-modern joke. Instead of regarding his mish-mash of eclectic genres (mainly folk/country and hip-hop) and post-modern humour as eccentric genius, they spit on him and denounce him as an ironic crook and the perfect example of music critics' Emperor's new clothes. I, as with all these controversies, take neither side. Overall I am probably a non-committal positivist - I like Beck and his music but I certainly don't think it is the work of a genius, no matter how eccentric or eclectic. Like a lot of these controversial artists, Beck is simply an intelligent man who knows how to write interesting, entertaining alternative rock music that causes most critics to foam at the mouth. Like Jon Spencer, Beck simply took a genre (in this case hip-hop) and turned it into a white-boy post-modern joke. Of course, his music is still good and in many cases excellent and, as long as you can tolerate his smug sense of humour (pretty much the staple of American alternative rock, it seems), there is much to admire in his works. He ain't gonna win any awards for sincerity, though.

The other point that I really need to make in this eccentric mish-mash of an introduction is to mention the debate over Beck's true representative style. At the time Mutations came out it was generally claimed that it wasn't the true follow-up to Odelay as Beck temporarily wanted to try his hand at something else. It is clear that any people making this judgement obviously weren't familiar with Mellow Gold as it contains much of the folk/country stylings that Mutations concentrated on. It seems to me that, instead of being a mis-representative album, Mutations was simply a result of Beck concentrating on one side of his repertoire (and all the better for it). It is a sad indictment of the commercial music scene that an artist's biggest selling album is automatically assumed to be their most representative. The thought that Midnite Vultures should sell more copies than Mutations simply because it is a bit more like Odelay is a rather depressing one. In any case, I think Midnite Vultures is no more representative than Mutations; it just concentrates on a different area of Beck's range. It is testament to Beck's diversity that he can vary so much between genres and still produce (to some extent) the goods. Mutations is also proof that, when he wants to, Beck is capable of producing great music that isn't just post-modern irony and tongue-in-cheek hip-hop references. Anyway, this will be dealt with in more detail in the album reviews, I just wanted to make explicit my belief that Beck is more than a one-trick pony, whatever the fickle music industry claims. Finally, Beck is so keen to explore different aspects that he releases tonnes of stuff on minor labels, not to mention the fact Mellow Gold wasn't even his first album, just his commercial break-through, that the four main albums are not the entirety of his catalogue. For the moment, though, I'm not keen enough to pick up his proper alternative stuff. After all, despite my respect and admiration, he ain't a Prince-like genius.

I'm sure you are all familiar with why this album was the one that gave Beck-ola his commercial breakthrough. If not, let me remind you with a few words of Spanish: "soy un perdedor". That's right, Beck was a loser so, it follows, why don't you kill him? "Loser" was, of course, the big hit from the album which sufficiently wowed the alternative rock scene enough to ensure that Beck was to become one talked-about individual for the years to come. Indeed, Beck is probably one of the biggest contemporary stars in the US (didn't he used to go out with Winona Ryder?). In any case, he wasn't a star when he produced this album and, in a way, it shows. Certainly this is a more lo-fi offering than his subsequent albums even if it still contains enough commercial gold-dust to satisfy the parasitic record companies. I'd venture this is an album less dominated with the post-modern hip-hop that was to become Beck's trademark, even if many songs bear a white-boy hip-hop influence ("Loser", for one). Songs like "Pay No Mind (Snoozer)" and "Nitemare Hippy Girl" are simple acoustic numbers, privy to a little charm, if hardly setting the world alight. Even more unexpected are the Eastern-flavoured drone-rock efforts such as "Steal My Body Home" and the album closer "Blackhole". Neither are the strongest compositions on the album and don't really make for easy listening, although they are certainly atmospheric. I, for one, salute Beck for a bit of artistic adventure (even if it isn't entirely successful). Actually, when have sitar-based tracks ever been that great? The likes of "Love You To" and "Within You Without You" (regardless of innovation) are hardly Beatles' classics. Hmmm... "Norwegian Wood" perhaps? In any case, you can certainly get a unique sound from sitars but I don't think it really transfers that well to rock music and Beck fails to buck the trend with his efforts. The most lo-fi moments on the album come mostly in the middle with "Truckdrivin Neighbours Downstairs" and "Sweet Sunshine". Both are two of the weakest tracks on the album and it is somewhat a relief that Beck was able to sufficiently refine his ideas to prevent such mis-steps on his future (major label) releases. Anyway, like I've already indicated, Beck was still sitting on a commercial nest-egg with plenty of the tunes on here. "Loser", regardless of its premature chronology, is still one of the most commercial tracks Beck has released and, presumably no little coincidence, his best. It also perfectly exhibits his unique fusion of hip-hop and folk, not to mention his off-the-wall post-modern lyrics ("in the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey"). Almost as commercial is the infectious "Beercan" for which Beck delights in affecting silly high-pitched vocals, much like some of Prince's own efforts. By the way, try saying "beer can" without sounding like a Jamaican saying "bacon". Bet you can't. Unless you are Jamaican in which case I can only apologise for my latent stereotyping. In fact, I wonder what a Jamaican saying "beer can" sounds like. Surely not the same as "bacon"? Oh anyway, "Fuckin With My Head" is another commercial hip-hop/folk fusion track that wouldn't have sounded out of place on Odelay. Good fun, any day of the week. Finally, I like the lo-fi rock of "Mutherfucker", which utilises probably the heaviest riff Beck's ever laid down and the distorted paranoid chant of "everybody's out to get you, mutherfucker". All in all, this is an album that you'd pretty much expect to sound like Beck's debut, even if it was actually his first commercial success rather than first album. I haven't heard his earlier stuff but I'd imagine "lo-fi" would be the key abbreviation. As it is, the balance on here between commercial po-mo hip-hop/folk that we usually associate with Beck, and more varied stylings (straight folk, sitars, etc.) makes for a perfectly satisfying outing.

If Mellow Gold was the commercial break-through then this was the commercial peak (thus far) for monsieur Becque. Out with the lo-fi's and in with the polished post-modern fusion of American acoustic folk/country and ironic white-boy hip-hop. That Beck sure knows how to impress the critics. But for this one the crowds in the street loved it just as much. "Devil's Haircut", "New Pollution", "Jack-Ass" and "Where It's At" were, I believe, the hit singles from the album (in more or less that order). I'm not even sure if any of them are an improvement over "Loser" but, regardless, the sheer quantity of commercial material on here saw it leap-frog Mellow Gold in terms of sales and good will. On the other hand, if you're the sort of person to have a go at Beck (shame on you!) then this makes for perfect cannon fodder. The whole album is just so smooth and slick that it can easily be perceived as an ironic pastiche, cleverly devised to impress rock critics and sell records to gullible consumers. Certainly Beck is pretty much at an all-time low, here, as far as sincerity is concerned. Not that it is a huge problem of course, witness the brilliance of the utterly insincere David Bowie, but it certainly makes this album hard to love, particularly if you are someone who takes their music seriously. This album might be dismissed as little more than a fashion accessory for your average hipster dufus. Obviously I think this is an excellent album but, on the other hand, it isn't something to get TOO worked up about. Not because of the insincere, smug post-modern posturing but more because things don't exactly run smoothly throughout. The couplet that follows the smash-and-grab opening foursome ("Derelict" and "Novacane") are really, really boring. If only this album could have gone from "The New Pollution" straight into "Jack-Ass" it would have seemed so much better and more consistent. The album also dips a tad towards the end, but nowhere nearly as badly as the two dreary numbers I've already scorned. The other thing worth mentioning is the little tricks that Beck injects into nearly every song work, almost uniformly, perfectly. Be it the rockabilly guitar break in "Lord Only Knows" or the snatch of robotic vocals after the first chorus of "Where It's At". In general, there are probably more samples and production tricks going on here than on Mellow Gold. This is probably due to the fact Beck took on a huge team of cohorts to assist with the album (including Becks' friend and mine Jon Spencer). The Dust Brothers co-produced it with him (famous? I don't know) and all songs were co-written affairs (perhaps with the Dust Brothers). I don't know whether all this external influence was at Beck's volition or on record company's orders; most likely a combination of both. In any case, I'm sure both parties were more than satisfied with the results. As I've already told you, the first four songs on here make up an absolutely perfect opening to the album. They are all, of course, these commercial ironic hip-hop songs. The riff-heavy "Devils Haircut" and the sax-y "The New Pollution" were the two singles but I don't see why the other two couldn't have been. "Hotwax" continues in the post-modern hip-hop vein but no less brilliantly than normal, with an amusing outro about "the rhythms of the universe". My favourite, though, probably on the whole album, is the country and western tinged "Lord Only Knows" which begins with a sampled scream before unexpectedly delivering an up-tempo steel guitar break. It, too, features an amusing outro - this time about getting pants in Houston. If we're talking samples the most prominent use (and perhaps the most cheeky) is for "Jack-Ass". For it Beck basically uses the entirety of the riff from Van Morrison's cover of "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" and sings his own laidback country tune over the top. It sounds really good but, having heard Van's original, it does seem somewhat cheeky (given that most of owners of this album won't realise the extent to which Beck ripped it off). "Where It's At" is probably the most ironic and post-modern Beck has ever got with its ludicrous use of samples and obvious hip-hop parodies. "High 5" is pretty much the same deal but not as good. I also like "Minus" which is a bit of a re-run of "Mutherfucker", with an escalating riff. My UK version comes with a bonus track, "Diskobox", which is alright but it doesn't really detract from feelings that the album fails to end as strongly as it begins. Still, this remains an excellent exercise in pleasing the critics and general public alike with sack-loads of songs with commercial appeal and post-modern brilliance. Its inconsistency, however, means it doesn't quite rank as one of the classics of the nineties; as many people seem keen to claim it as.

Perhaps I was a little unfair on Beck in my opening guff to suggest that he is an entirely insincere artist. You see, for this album, Beck comes across as a very sincere artist after all. I'm not suggesting this a truly confessional album or anything as, for the most part, it clearly isn't but I regard this as an attempt by Beck to create truly sincere art. What I mean by this is that, lyrically, this is probably not that sincere but as a work of art it is, in that instead of post-modern posturing to impress the critics Beck actually wanted to create sincere art. Consider this art qua art as opposed to art as post-modern posturing. In that way, I suppose this isn't a true follow-up to Odelay as, although not mis-representative in terms of style, it is in terms of artistic motivation. To cut a long story short, just think of this as Beck's "serious" album. This is also one of the very, very few great albums to have been released in 1998 which was, all told, a terrible year for music. Obviously I'm sure there are underground exceptions I'm unaware of but this really was lean ground, in between the Brit-pop surge of the mid-nineties (ending, more or less, with Radiohead's OK Computer) and the rock-revival of the new millennium. This is also, perhaps, Beck's best album to date. Clearly if you only like Beck for his party songs then you will be giving this short shrift but I reckon the semi-serious, sincere leanings give this a unique feel (lacking the superficial gloss of his post-modern party albums) and therefore makes it the most rewarding in the long term. This is all helped by the recruitment of Nigel Godrich as producer (famed for working with Radiohead). Although most of the album doesn't bear any overwhelming influence, the latter three numbers show a side to Beck that many would have previously thought impossible. Obviously, most of this stuff ain't a million miles away from the likes of "Pay No Mind" and "Blackhole" on Mellow Gold but the last three songs ("Static", "Diamond Bollocks" and, in particular, "Runners Dial Zero") scale artistic heights that you would never expect Beck to reach. "Static" begins by sounding quite light but it builds up into an unexpectedly ominous climax. Even better, and weirder, is the inappropriately named "Diamond Bollocks" which almost matches Radiohead's own "Paranoid Android" for contorted structure and seamless switches. Indeed, it is clear that OK Computer had quite an influence on Beck, far beyond the recruitment of Godrich. It is almost as if he had written these throwaway acoustic numbers, heard OK Computer, and then added the extraordinary final triplet. The closing "Runners Dial Zero" is almost, without doubt, the least Beck-like track you're ever likely to hear. Against a sparse, atmospheric keyboard produced sound-scape Beck intones lines like "by the dried up stream, we slit our throats and dreamed". If it had been a Radiohead track on Kid A I reckon people would be going nuts over it but, as it is, it exists only as a forgotten, but no less fascinating or unexpected, finale to Beck's "mis-representative" album. The rest, though, is all stuff that isn't that unlike half of Mellow Gold, so I don't see why so many eyebrows were raised (except by people who hadn't heard Mellow Gold). The best of the rest is probably the ramshackle country waltz of "Sing it Again" and the sitar-based "Nobody's Fault But My Own". "Nobody's Fault" is much like "Steal My Body Home" and "Blackhole" in terms of atmospherics although it elevates itself above the pair by combining them with a far more memorable chorus. The opening "Cold Brains" reminds me a little of Pavement, although I guess that is due to them also using Godrich for their swan-song, Terror Twilight. "Dead Melodies" and "We Live Again" both feature similar, drifting harpsichord-like guitar lines, whilst the likes of "Bottle of Blues" and "Canceled Check" are simple alt-country styled musings, but still with a great deal of charm. You know in Britain, we write "check" as "cheque"? I wonder why that is. Probably something to do with our French origins. Or pretentiousness. Comprendez? All of this stuff (up to the last three numbers) is quite lightweight but in a much more relaxed manner than his post-modern material. Through not trying so hard he sounds far more genuine, I guess. Only the silly "Tropicalia" approaches his previous irony-excess and, on this album, it feels far less irritating. All in all, this is a far from irritating album. It is also the sort of album Beck-haters should actually quite like (especially if they like Radiohead). If you ask me: a brilliant album and also exactly the album Beck needed to release to prove to us genuine fans that he was more than a post-modern one-trick pony. And sincere into the bargain.

NB. It has since come to my attention that the American release of Mutations doesn't have the final two tracks "Diamond Bollocks" and "Runners Dial Zero". In which case, knock the overall rating down to 8* and curse your luck that the American record company saw fit to leave off the two best tracks on the album.

Hands up who likes Prince? You can't see me but right now I've got my hand up. 'cos I like Prince. I think he is brill. And you know who else likes Prince? Our good friend Mr. Beck Hansen also likes Prince. So much so that he decided his "real" follow-up to Odelay was going to be a Prince tribute album. Obviously it is doing a disservice to both Beck and Prince to suggest this album is a mere tribute album and, whilst there are differences, it is clear that Beck pretty much concentrated on the artist formerly known as Kevin as his next post-modern rip-off. The majority of the songs on here are slick funk numbers with Beck adopting various silly, high-pitched voices in true Prince style. Many of the lyrics are also concerned with, er... carnality. But given it is a homage to a man who wrote a song with the chorus "I want to do it, baby, all the time" this is a somewhat natural response. Of course, Beck doesn't sound anywhere near as genuinely sleazy as Prince, more like some middle-class white-boy taking the piss. Maybe because of this Beck also throws in some of his best one-liners, all on the same album. "I'm mixing business with leather"; "I think we're going crazy, her left eye is lazy"; "I'm a full-grown man, but I'm not afraid to cry"; "I met you at JC Penney's, I read your name-tag, it said Jenny"; "I said 'lady, step inside my Hyundai'"; and so on and so forth. Therefore it might surprise you to learn that this album has been awarded a lower mark than his previous excursions. However, I don't want you thinking this is anything to do with Beck's post-modern Prince impression. Personally, I don't think it is any less clever or witty than Odelay and, in a way, the utter insincerity on here, coming after Mutations, again shows Beck flexing his diversity in a most impressive manner. No, the problem here is the songs. Up to about "Hollywood Freaks" is really quite good, but beyond that it just becomes a wholly tiresome affair. The likes of "Broken Train" and "Pressure Zone" just have nothing whatsoever going for them. Like the dull couplet on Odelay ("Derelict" and "Novocane") stretched out into almost half an album. Indeed, the only thing that prevents me from turning this album off at the half-way point is the final song, "Debra". It is, quite simply, the funniest song Beck has ever done (to my sense of humour, anyway). He plays the watery sax lines from David Bowie's "Win" (from Young Americans) with a wah-wah guitar, over which he sings some of his wittiest lyrics. The lyrics aren't even the coup de grace, however, as he sings them in the most brilliantly witty falsetto you're ever likely to hear. Compare it to Prince's "Adore" from Sign 'O' the Times and I defy you not to find it utterly hilarious. Of course, just one of the brilliant features about the song is that Debra is not even the person the protagonist is singing to but her sister. "I want to get with you, and your sister, I think her name's Debra" goes the wholly fantastic chorus. To avoid over-egging the cake it is worth pointing out that there are at least three almost as equally brilliant songs on the first half. "Sexx Laws" (with its Sly and the Family Stone brass and banjo outro), "Nicotine & Gravy" and "Mixed Bizness" are three songs equal in their droll humour and funk-styled melodies. "Hollywood Freaks" is possibly the sleaziest song on the album and also the one that most indulges in his long-running parody of hip-hop, taking the piss more out of sleazy modern day r'n'b than Mr. symbol. As with a lot of 7* albums it is a frustratingly inconsistent affair. It had the potential to be along side the likes of Odelay as a post-modern classic but, unfortunately, the weaker second half ("Debra" aside) really drags down the overall listening experience. Tracks like "Milk & Honey" just seem like Beck going through the motions, perhaps because of the inordinate high regard he is held in amongst so many critics. It is almost as if he has a formula for post-modern knock-offs that he merely has to stick to to impress the critics (which is supported by the fact Mutations wasn't allowed to be the proper follow-up to Odelay). It's sad, really, although there is still half an album of A grade material on here, no matter how ironic or post-modern it is.

Hands up who likes Nick Drake? You can't see me but right now I've got my... oh, we've been here before, haven't we? Whereas the post-modern successor to Odelay was a tongue-in-cheek piss-take of Prince in this case, the serious follow-up to Mutations, it seems Beck has instead been listening to a lot of Nick Drake. Obviously, due to the very nature of this album, it is a different sort of homage but there are a few too many similarities to allow my good self to call it coincidental. Listen to "Round the Bend" and try telling me it doesn't sound like a morose outtake from Five Leaves Left. He even tries to sing like him! And the song that ends the album on here, "Side of the Road", to my ears, seems more than a little similar to the finale of Drake's debut, "Saturday Sun". Indeed, on an album with such startling similarities it seems as if Beck was really taking liberties calling a song "Sunday Sun". Still, it doesn't hinder the album as such and if "Round the Bend" is a less than great song it is more because Beck sacrifices atmosphere for melody (as he sometimes does on his "serious" songs) than any similarities with the dearly departed singer-songwriter. Of course, it would be near negligent of me not to mention the fact that this is a break-up album (in true Blood On the Tracks style) which makes for, by far and away, Beck's most serious album to date. There is literally not one joke to be had on here. Whereas Mutations still had plenty of quirks and post-modern twists, this album is played straight-faced through-out. Indeed, the reason why Mutations is better (the UK version at least) is because these quirks made for an exceptionally interesting album, aided by such throwaway cuts as "Bottle of Blues" and "Tropicalia". In contrast to its predecessor (although it seems odd calling a penultimate release a predecessor) this album is so very slow and serious; almost one-paced. Obviously this entails problems as not all the material on here can sustain interest throughout and, if I'm honest, the most ambitious track, "Paper Tiger", doesn't really seem to succeed. I quite like the strings vs. guitar duel but I can't fathom that rhythm and, above all, I just don't find it particularly entertaining. I'm not going to stretch to saying any song's bad, though. Even though "Round the Bend" is all atmospherics it is, at least, good atmospherics. Indeed, to counter this slight negativity that is creeping into the review I should give a mention to "Lost Cause" which I honestly think is the best Beck song I've ever heard. It has a nice minimalist-sounding (although deceptively full) arrangement, affecting lyrics about his break-up and the most gorgeous of melodies. It is certainly the best example of Beck's vision for this album fully succeeding. In terms of melancholy acoustic tracks the pick of the bunch are probably the opening "The Golden Age, the closing "Side of the Road" and the quite-near-the-start "Guess I'm Doing Fine". Both "The Golden Age" and "Guess I'm Doing Fine" have laid-back arrangements and memorable choruses. The Drake-esque "Side of the Road" is actually the only song on here to rely almost solely on an acoustic guitar (quite like Pink Moon in that respect) and makes for a wonderfully melancholy and wistful finale to the album. In contrast to the numbers I've just mentioned, along with "Paper Tiger", "Lonesome Tears" is one of the most grandiose tracks on the album. I swear the intro sounds just like Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" and the strolling yet ominous verses are similar in feel as well. The chorus, however, is a shock to the system with its pompous sounding strings and grandiose refrain. If I've left it unclear, that was meant to be a positive description. The falsetto twist for the chorus of "Already Dead" is an affecting touch and the Eastern-flavoured "Sunday Sun" also has a prominent chorus. All in all, this album veers between reflective acoustic numbers and more pompous-sounding excursions. The entire exercise is serious through and through, however, making this easily Beck's most weighty album thus far. Perhaps the unchanging mood is a slight hindrance but you certainly couldn't accuse this album of lack of atmosphere. It seems listening to Nick Drake paid off more than his previous obsession with Prince. Still, as Jerry Seinfeld once famously said: "gotta love the Drake". And it appears Beck Hansen is unlikely to disagree.

That Beck sure is a surly bastard. As soon as Odelay became a smash hit it was bloody obvious that what he shoulda done was just re-hash and re-release the same old shtick. But no! Instead, he experiments with alt-country, post-modern soul, and elegiac self-introspection with varying, but mostly, superb results. So it is with great delight that I greet the news that, ten years after the event, Beck has finally come out with the long-awaited follow-up to Odelay - the only album he ever needed to make. I, like the rest of you, do not want to be intrigued by his left-field appropriation of traditional musical genres or saddened by his sporadic bursts of tragic beauty. What I want is Beck, now a family man in his mid-thirties, reuniting with the Dust Brothers and trying desperately to relive former glories that are, by now, well out of sight and out of bounds. To drop the sarcasm (alas) I am, of course, a big fan of Odelay and, although it is a little messy at times, it is doubtless a flawed masterpiece and a milestone of nineties alternative rock. What makes Odelay great, though, is its sheer verve, vitality, and exuberance. It is a tour-de-force of eclectic music-making and most of its showy tricks work perfectly, from the surreal samples to country and western guitar licks to robotic vocals, even to five seconds of Schubert in the middle of a hip-hop song. Ten years down the road, though, and Beck and the Dust Brothers seem to have lost all grasp on what made such an expansive enterprise so appealing. It would be a little too convenient to wave it away as the product of the energy of youth but now they just seem just to be guessing their way through. It sounds like the people behind this album did not even make Odelay and, instead, have been given a copy of it and are trying to work out what the original team did. Almost nothing works, from the forced synthesiser bleeps on "Hell Yes" to the pasted-on guitar riffs of "E-Pro" and the train-wreck arrangement of "Rental Car", and it becomes almost painful to listen to a once-great team reach inspirational bankruptcy. Where Odelay sounded like the work of a kid with Attention Deficit Disorder this album sounds like it was made by a man trying to impersonate a kid with ADD, which is far more sinister. Exacerbating such problems, and ensuring this album cannot be rescued from the graveyard of mediocrity with long-term listening, is the fact that Beck has similarly failed to come up with any decent melodies; "Girl" is the only effort to just about feature a catchy chorus. Only when he steps back a bit from his bastardised Odelay blueprint do the results become more palatable, with "Scarecrow" producing an understated plodding groove and the fragile "Broken Drum" recalling the frail ambience of Sea Change and, as a result, provides a brief flicker of middle-aged Beck as a good artist. I earlier accused Midnite Vultures as suffering a little from the commercial weight put upon Beck to produce a big-selling pop album but it still featured a number of brilliant songs, elevated with a breathless melodic vitality and by his artistic enthusiasm for his great post-modern joke. Nothing on here comes close to matching the hyperactive majesty of "Sexx Laws" or "Mixed Business", let alone the highlights on Odelay, and with such failure comes my ultimate self-congratulatory justification. Odelay was a great album but Beck has since produced plenty of top flight material through exploring many different avenues. As this album shows, after ten years of misguided clamouring, selling-out was never going to be the answer. Perhaps a stronger artist than Beck would have not eventually relented but we can only hope this album's greatest success is in proving to Beck, and the world at large, that he should be free to concentrate on exactly what he choses to in the future.

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Email me at: jackfeeny@yahoo.co.uk