2008 Woodie Awards
Get assaulted by the sweet sounds of Beck
Justin McElfresh
Issue date: 4/15/05 Section: No Limits
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"Guero" keeps hitting me with a two-by-four. Someone call an ambulance. I think I have a concussion.
There is a surfeit of evidence that my beloved "loser" has grown up; from those old 90s cassettes fraught with tape hiss to the orchestral sadness of 2002's "Sea Change," Beck got all mature on us. Not that it matters, since it still retains the pathological Beckesthetic that short circuits your objectivity. Wherever it's at.
Though to be fair, I am more a fan of his early to mid-90s material in all of its dusty no-fi noise and spaced out trigonometric grammar. Yet each of the subsequent albums, "Mutations" to "Guero," has a nice subtle attraction that cannot be neglected.
This album was supposed to be a garage record. It came out like yard sale. There was wreckage from "Odelay," the canceled blues from "Mutations," anesthetized renditions of "Midnite Vultures'" rickety funk, and extra lethargic ashes from "Sea Change."
With that said, "Guero" oscillates between really strong tracks and those you can't help but feel he did better elsewhere; yet it comes back to the fact that even if the song is subpar, it is still good.
Here is a list of subjective medicines; let us start our convalescence.
"E-Pro" sounds like an alternator with a pretty heart murmur and when the "nah nah nah nah nah nah nah"s kick in, the gas tank explodes.
"Girl" is a love song, I think - a rag doll burning from the inside out.
"Hell Yes" is fantastic fax machine hip-hop, albeit a fax machine on the fritz, feeding us a classified ad of non-sequiturs and abstract free jazz associations.
"Broken Drum" is a dusty, drowsy elegy that sounds like it was recorded in a telephone booth.
"Rental Car" is a carnival (yeah, yeah, yeah) of little Shriner cars on parade.
"Guero" is a nice topography of Beck. It is an effective police blotter of collapsed power lines that will no doubt be instrumental in recovering from all the other muzak viruses that infiltrate our radios. At times I wish there was more of his harmonica work and cracked word antics, but I'll settle for a Beck who seems to be happy and getting on with his life.
There is a surfeit of evidence that my beloved "loser" has grown up; from those old 90s cassettes fraught with tape hiss to the orchestral sadness of 2002's "Sea Change," Beck got all mature on us. Not that it matters, since it still retains the pathological Beckesthetic that short circuits your objectivity. Wherever it's at.
Though to be fair, I am more a fan of his early to mid-90s material in all of its dusty no-fi noise and spaced out trigonometric grammar. Yet each of the subsequent albums, "Mutations" to "Guero," has a nice subtle attraction that cannot be neglected.
This album was supposed to be a garage record. It came out like yard sale. There was wreckage from "Odelay," the canceled blues from "Mutations," anesthetized renditions of "Midnite Vultures'" rickety funk, and extra lethargic ashes from "Sea Change."
With that said, "Guero" oscillates between really strong tracks and those you can't help but feel he did better elsewhere; yet it comes back to the fact that even if the song is subpar, it is still good.
Here is a list of subjective medicines; let us start our convalescence.
"E-Pro" sounds like an alternator with a pretty heart murmur and when the "nah nah nah nah nah nah nah"s kick in, the gas tank explodes.
"Girl" is a love song, I think - a rag doll burning from the inside out.
"Hell Yes" is fantastic fax machine hip-hop, albeit a fax machine on the fritz, feeding us a classified ad of non-sequiturs and abstract free jazz associations.
"Broken Drum" is a dusty, drowsy elegy that sounds like it was recorded in a telephone booth.
"Rental Car" is a carnival (yeah, yeah, yeah) of little Shriner cars on parade.
"Guero" is a nice topography of Beck. It is an effective police blotter of collapsed power lines that will no doubt be instrumental in recovering from all the other muzak viruses that infiltrate our radios. At times I wish there was more of his harmonica work and cracked word antics, but I'll settle for a Beck who seems to be happy and getting on with his life.