Beck Albums Poll

Mellow Gold still sounds like a folk hip-hop and goon show amalgam that no one's approached.

i just saw Beck here in 2018 and was blown away that the kids are into him. it was a music festival with a bunch of bands. i guess the new album is a hit and played on modern rock stations. it got me thinking, what is my favorite Beck album? so why not poll it and see what ILM thinks?

After that one I'd vote for:

Odelay
Mutations
Guero

fuck the rest

Mutations is the best man

But yeah Alfred otm - nobody's even fairly emulated MG

Mellow Gold

Mutations 4ever

Fuck Mutations
Fuck Beck
I dressed like him for four years and he became an idiot
I voted Odelay but in my heart I voted One Foot In The Grave

Fuck Mutations
Fuck Beck
I dressed like him for four years and he became an idiot
I voted Odelay but in my heart I voted One Foot In The Grave

but you're a better dresser -- why'd you even try?

Guero

I was 15! Value Village was all I had

I have a viscerally negative response to anything after Odelay because I guess there’s a fine line between genius and stupid

as we debated on the Frank Ocean thread ;)

Midnite Vultures.

not the first guy i'd have expected to have a quarter-century-plus career

'Fuck Mutations' is a pretty wild call on a pretty innocent-seeming record

it's that or Mellow Gold, will mull it over

Midnight Vultures 1st and Mellow 2nd

in the late 90s there were two songs that, if they came on in the bar where i was playing pool, made me unbeatable

one was 'd'you know what i mean' and the other was 'debra'

(there was also one place that played gypsy kings and/or duran duran's cover of 'white lines', which made me instantly lose)

here let me help, mookie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivDRJuBszVw

don't do it

i never knew Duran Duran covered that song, probably would have been better off not hearing it.

Cooked chicken for sure

Midnight Vultures, but Odelay and Mutations are also great.

Dude you don't need much more than value village ....

Mutations
Odelay
Mellow Gold
Midnite Vultures
...
Sea Change
...
...
the rest

Odelay

oops -- forgot Midnite Vultures, which also has appalling crap sharing space with his friskiest numbers.

midnite vultures

I dressed like him for four years and he became an idiot

New Board Description?

I remember John Peel playing 'Loser', I think it might have been the festive fifty that year, and saying it was a great single but we'll probably never hear anything more from him..

I voted Mellow Gold but I feel like I should have voted Midnight Vultures. He was pretty good up to Sea Change (which is a bit of a slog but its got some decent tunes on it). He got boring after that

I'll be that lone anachronistic K Records-minded weirdo who votes for One Foot In The Grave, an album that felt snug as the perfect glove the first time I heard it in 1994 and somehow still does. If that album didn't exist, I'd have voted for Odelay (perfect alt-pop (Beck) or Stereopathic Soulmanure (wonky early crust/kitchen sink Beck) or Morning Phase (ambient Beck that should've been on my top ten list the year it came out).

Every other album on this list, to be honest, has some gems but then also some filler; the filler piled up as the years reeled forward. Mutations is gorgeous but...not involving somehow? Sea Change was always boring, and the beginning of decline (come fight me, I'm sorry his heart was broken but don't defend that). The Information is underrated. Colors should have been more like the art-deco loosies he put out after Morning Phase.

I wore out my copy of Mellow Gold at the time but...I probably burned myself out on it the same way I did Nirvana's Nevermind.

(Every album has something great though - sometimes, a few somethings.)

The hidden track on mutations is possibly the best thing beck wrote

Diamond Bollocks? Yeah that's a favourite of mine. Progge

The UK-only bonus track Runners Dial Zero also great

^ good one imago. Always felt like morherfucker predates Marilyn Manson

I think I'll vote Mellow Gold though, because despite having three amazing tracks to open up AND close (if we're going with the UK release), Mutations sags horribly in the middle imo

Mellow Gold>Midnite Vultures>One Foot in the Grave (very minute gradations of quality between those three, really)>>>Odelay>Stereopathetic Soul Manure>>>>>Mutations>>>>>>maybe Golden Feelings. Sea Change, more like Pee Change.

Kinda almost a toss-up between MG and MV but I went with the former because it still amazingly makes me feel things 25 years and hundreds of plays later. MV is a postmodern masterpiece tho.

Really surprised at the repping for Mutations. It never stuck with me and a recent revisit was pretty underwhelming.

Sea change was so boring live, like someone deliberately putting a ban on fun and beck sitting near the edge of the stage like a sad reject version of David Cassidy

A track from The Information I've long adored:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__WNeFobg-M

Cold Brains is his best song imo, and Lazy Flies always pops into my head

Hell, I might just vote Mutations for those six songs. It's a really tough choice

"The Info" was definitely my "off the bus" one - I don't recall owt about it..

Was that when I got off, or did the bus come back around for me and I went " nah, you're all right... "

I had no idea Mutations was disliked by anyone. It's got a fantastic vibe, killer playing, and his best set of lyrics (perfectly balanced between plaintive and nonsense)

There are some very good songs on Mutations but it pales as an album in comparison with his best.

We really need to do a Beck tracks poll someday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkCg-3nxT8E

Seriously. In his prime, his b-sides and outtakes were often up there with his album tracks. Like, Odelay is already a very good album but I almost think the two-disc deluxe edition with all the extra tracks is even better.

^^^

I had a long discussion of Beck with some folks about where his head might be creatively these days. I argued that he needs to be more Thurston Moore - i.e. mainstream pop rock albums but then also weirdo art shit on the side. The others argued that, hey, maybe that's not where his head is now - maybe his head's in a different place creatively, that he's into what he thinks the marketplace wants from him now, and writing specifically about his domestic life, etc.

Side note: I suspect his vault of unreleased/shelved music is huge and fascinating. Wonder if someday we'll get to hear it.

and he produced Thurston Moore, so it make sense

(Somehow I used the phrase "his head" three times in my last post. I need more sleep.)

Just the other day rewatched the Larry Sanders episode where he performs 'Heartland Feelings' (from Golden Feelings). Equal parts deeply compelling and patience straining. That's our Beck.

Sorry for drunk double posts last night

I hated Mutations when it came out, there was no slyness. I reviewed it lukewarm for the uni paper and they never hired me back. I love the bonus track so much on it

Production on Midnite is great but lyrics are crap. Latter day Beck albums I enjoy because of David Campbell but not because of Beck

Norman Schwarzkopf, something tells me you want to go home.

*googles Normal Schwartzkopf*

Idgi

Tt, it's among the album-ful of amazing lyrics that you so casually malign!

GOLD: Mellow Gold

SILVER: One Foot In The Grave

BRONZE: Stereopathetic Soulmanure

along with the B-sides and "A Western Harvest Field by Moonlight" BECK owned 1994.

I was so completely dismissive when 'Loser' first surfaced, like 'yeah, cool slacker anthem bro, enjoy the wonder of your one hit', but then a high school friend picked me up one day while playing MG in his car and I was like WHAT IS THIS?!? I was sold. One Foot in the Grave might've been the first album I ever bought that didn't have an attendant single or video.

I love that Carrie brownstein quote where she says it was weird seeing loser played cuz she felt performers should care and own the stage and not be so detached

I’m an alien from another sphere
The thing I like best about the earth is the range of colors
Brilliant to mundane
I’ve gotta go now, someone is calling me in my space ship

Odelay juuuust over Mellow Gold. Sea Change is good. But "fuck Beck" is otm.

Bazookas and fisticuffs
Medicating in Porsches
98-karat stick shift
Chinatown late-night meals
Alfonzo giving me a backrub
2 P. M. Laser vizzaginal rejuvenation
Triple album project
Detonating' tracks like these
Magnums and Barrettas
Part-time hostages in pottery classes
Blind date at the wax museum
Norwegian hockey players
Passed out in government limos
Prime ministers with cryogenic faces
Louis Vuitton suitcases
Autographs and paid vacations
Divorce papers and synthetic lubrications
Playing' you like top-40 stations

^ sounds like a lyric from Midnite vultures. Wonder how much of his lyrics were Scientology cack

lol(?)

"He said, 'if you got money, I'll see that you don't walk'"

Some unpopular opinions.

https://www.splicetoday.com/music/they-told-me-to-tell-you-there-s-nothing-to-tell-you-there-s-nothing-to-sell-you

A decade ago, this would have been Sea Change without a second thought. These days, it's Mellow Gold without hesitation.

I argued that he needs to be more Thurston Moore

― The Harsh Tutelage of Michael McDonald (Raymond Cummings)

and he produced Thurston Moore, so it make sense

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, March 22, 2018 7:39 AM (four hours ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdzY49xlvdY

Sea Change is some boring ass shit. Just put Nick Drake on, geez

Seriously. I can't think of a more precipitous drop in artistic quality/my interest from one album to the next.

Mutations is probably what I've listened to the most. Probably haven't listened to it in 10 years but can still remember everything on it.

I don't think there's another artist where my opinion went so quickly from "Genius, I need to hear everything this guy has done" to "This is terrible and this guy will ever do anything worthwhile again".

voted Stereopathetic Soulmanure. it's my personal fave. you can wrap this entire album up in the opening transition from the lofi noise rock of "Pink Noise (Rock Me Amadeus)" straight into buttery smooth Johnny Cash-approved classic Nashville country of "Rowboat". i love the skits. i love the jokes. i love the mixtape feel. love his early bluegrass anti-folk tapes as well, while we're at it.

Odelay was my jam as a kid. hearing the keyboard lick to "Where It's At" on SNL was a mindblowing experience. seeing some guy act like Devo/Kraftwerk while playing synth noises on live TV (while Beck does a sloppy/affectionate James Brown imitations) was a momentous event in my life.

Mutations i fell in love with instantly. it's a modern psychedelic masterpiece. i love the layered keyboards on this record. i remember listening to this on headphones during a camping trip and looking up at the moon through the trees. it was magical.

Midnight Vultures imo is his peak. just listening to the b-sides from that era alone, dude was on another planet. everything past that is definitely lacking the spark. still some good stuff but on the whole pretty aimless and unfun.

Diana Ross loved it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_WvTVH-jsk

After this we should do a Mellow Gold poll. Searched the archives and was surprised there wasn't one

Voted Mellow Gold. The deep cuts on here are still amazing and I look forward to ardently defending "Whiskeyclone Hotel City" and "Steal My Body Home" to you nutters at a later date

Beck feels like a pretty empty vessel to me these days but Mellow Gold/One Foot In the Grave/Odelay/Mutations are great. I somehow kinda associate him with other musical weirdos who got annoying (like The Flaming Lips), though he is a lot better.

It is pretty easy to see why Beck is still popular as his sound with mixing everything into the blender sonically fits in pretty well with the laptop band stuff going on now. He's always had two musical faces, one is a fairly serious singer songwriter type and the other is the musical libertine jokester. Discography wise, it's kinda cool that he has both party albums and some more laid back acoustic/folk records. He is good at both things. Couple of the albums mix it up.

Haven't heard anything past The Information other than on the radio. I got Guero and The Information a year or so ago out of the cheap bin and like them ok, but they were not as immediate as some of his earlier records. Never heard Golden Feelings but have had the rest since they were new.

I probably lean to

the earlier records as those things was just a soundtrack to my mid to late 20s. Beck was one of those artists that all types of people dug and would listen too.

odelay is the best
mellow gold is classic
mutations is aight
earlier stuff is cool
the rest can gth

She looks so Israeli

Odelay is the only one I like all the way through these days but most of his albums have at least one really good song. Odd that he hasn't had a best of at any point, that would probably be a good record.

I somehow kinda associate him with other musical weirdos who got annoying (like The Flaming Lips), though he is a lot better.

― omar little, Thursday, March 22, 2018 3:29 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Flaming Lips have one album that's legit (Transmissions, if you need a side of specificity with your challops) and a handful that are okay and they don't come within spittin' distance of prime-era Beck.

I associated him at the time with like Grand Royal style "alternative" music

Flaming lips have the worst singer ever

flaming lips legit album is clouds taste metallic obv ffs

Nahhhh. I'll give them props for the spectacle of Zaireeka, which everyone should experience once with a handful of friends, but it's no great shakes divorced from that experience.

everything the flaming lips released in the 90s was amazing. outside of that decade, not so much, though there are some good things here and there.

Beck's non-album work of the last seven or eight years is my favorite of his work, way more than any of his albums (which I sorta fell off following somewhere after 'Sea Change').

https://www.soundcloud.com/dunvagenmusic/nyc-73-78

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO9nZp8tijE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvDy3Gi8k2s

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL344D578F844FB6DF

Mellow Gold takes this. Still love that album.

I like pretty much everything the Flaming Lips did up through Transmissions (their masterpiece, imo) and very little after that point. Other favorites include Hear It Is, In a Priest Driven Ambulance and Hit to Death in the Future Head. This despite Wayne Coyne being, yeah, an obstacle.

Flaming lips have more than one legit album - clouds taste metallic for example. Or in a priest driven ambulance. What The fucks going on here

They probably have the makings of a legit compilation of random tracks from their less-than-legit albums, sure. But this is not the place.

Odelay just over Mutations. The latter is probably more cleanly recommendable, just a great collection of songs, sounding great, but I lived in the former, I know and love every one of its little moves. Strong contender for being the CD I played the greatest number of times in the late 90s.

soundslike otm

don't forget harry partch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5xhpIFxi7M

Sea Change and Morning Phase are beautiful and awesome, but his other, earlier mode is still much better (and 100x better live). There are tracks in his acoustic mode that are similar to River Man. Otherwise, Nick Drake is a pretty lazy comparison.

I voted Odelay but in my heart I voted One Foot In The Grave

Odelay was a disappointment because my pressing was weird and crackly, I've never trusted 180gm vinyl since (and had never heard of it before), voted One Foot In The Grave with my finger

his alleged first TV appearance ever, in Australia 1994 with pre-scieno band

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j44QKz10Dyk

Going to add Beck to our artists poll queue. If no one else wants to run it, I will do it and bump it up in the queue. Meaning, it will cone up sooner rather than later.

Beck is an artist that was such a part of my formative years in high school w music that I find it hard to be too objective now. Odelay sounded fresh to me in highschool and mutations ruled my life. Dead weight is great too

Flaming Lips have one album that's legit (Transmissions, if you need a side of specificity with your challops) and a handful that are okay and they don't come within spittin' distance of prime-era Beck.

― Toilet Paper Tube Bracelets -- Super Hero Themed? (Old Lunch), Thursday, March 22, 2018 3:17 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well i did say he is a lot better! i can't even listen to the Flaming Lips these days. i'd probably buy some Beck albums if I saw them on CD, my kid would love them.

Odley or Sea Change for me, but I do listen to Modern Guilt quite a bit since its such a tight little album.

tough call between Mellow Gold and Midnite Vultures, went with the latter. One Foot In The Grave is pretty great as well.

modern guilt is some solid b-tier beck

Voted Midnite Vultures cos it's one of the most straight-up fun albums I've ever heard, the production is deliciously meticulous.

is Colors any good? i know the three singles from it and they are not bad at all. not really my cup of tea these days but is the album strong?

The title track gives me pleasure when I hear it on rotation at my college station.

I heard it nearly front to back at a record store a few months back and it sounded almost impossibly pedestrian

Come on motherfucker, put your clothes on!

It's a nothing, dependent on the chorus mixing board tricks.

"midnite vultures" was a great 00s album bridge in college for music and comedy people to bond over. "Norman Schwartzkoff/Something tells me you want to go home" was a line I remember being uttered to passed out friends at parties.

Mutations is still my overall fave but, shameful as this fact is, Midnite Vultures was indispensable for teaching my 14/15-year-old-brain how to enjoy music that wasn't guitar-centric.

Vultures is one of the most DGAF fun albums ever.

it pulls off a neat trick where it actually sounds fun and not just labored, even though it was very obviously extremely labored

Did I read somewhere long ago that it was built from the drums up? That’s how I hear it at least

Sounds about right.

I do think the middle stretch ("Hollywood Freaks" -> "Broken Train") does basically suck though

disagree, that run includes "Peaches & Cream" which will make my Top 25 Beck songs.

ugh no it's such a slog

I do think the middle stretch ("Hollywood Freaks" -> "Broken Train") does basically suck though

― Simon H., Saturday, March 24, 2018 12:

WHAT???

automatic bazootie etc

I think the avalanches are the worthy and proper successors to beck

Or to the dust brothers

These poll options = the soundtrack to the Church of Scientology barbecue.

Yeah Dust Bros would work too

This is actually really hard, in the end I had to vote for Mutations. You don't think of Beck in these type of terms but the music actually ends up being classic.

I do like the newer song he has out, I'm assuming it's from Colors.

I I remember very clearly the joy of finding “stereopathic” at the local loser record shop a few months after hearing MG while getting juiced up beyond belief

I'm listening to the MV b-sides and some of them should definitely replace some of the album tracks.

mutations

I'll be that lone anachronistic K Records-minded weirdo who votes for One Foot In The Grave, an album that felt snug as the perfect glove the first time I heard it in 1994 and somehow still does. If that album didn't exist, I'd have voted for Odelay (perfect alt-pop (Beck) or Stereopathic Soulmanure (wonky early crust/kitchen sink Beck) or Morning Phase (ambient Beck that should've been on my top ten list the year it came out).

― The Harsh Tutelage of Michael McDonald (Raymond Cummings)

Here, here!

I never cared much for his earlier "noise-pop-hop"-oriented material (although it certainly grew on me sine) , ...Grave is like he was getting his Bob Dylan/Self Portrait shtick outta the way right up front. I enjoy how genuinely collaborative it feels and the un-snarkiness of its delivery.

A true slacker masterpiece.

i love K Records and i like "One Foot" but prefer the more anarchic "Stereopathetic" (which is just as much fake folk as it is noise). the little spoken word snapshots bring to mind Van Dyke Parks or anthropological Folkways-style recordings. the sound of Beck running down the stairs in a stairway in the middle of the acapella breakdown in "Today Has Been a Fucked Up Day" to unpause the tape recorder. i love it so much, it's so tactile. imo "One Foot" is less playful, more serious faced, more in line with "Sea Change"/"Morning Phase" and the boring 70s singer songwriter stuff he wins Grammy's for.

I think the avalanches are the worthy and proper successors to beck

they supported him in 1997* and obv blew him off stage

* when Beck's band had a DJ and the Avs didn't

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

the sound of Beck running down the stairs in a stairway in the middle of the acapella breakdown in "Today Has Been a Fucked Up Day" to unpause the tape recorder. i love it so much, it's so tactile.

Yes, I love that a lot, too. I was just listening to that song the other day and it occurred to me for the first time that the 'woo-hoo' call and response at the end could've been some totally unplanned thing where someone on the street overheard him and 'woo-hoo'-ed back at him. Beck sounds like he's laughing and wasn't expecting it. However it played out, it's all great.

^^^^

Also, you will hear nothing resembling these songs on Sea Change or Morning Phase, FYI.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq1o7EWu2K0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMO0DfPwWuo

The songs that don't sound like those songs are under-produced, weedy, full of weird mad-libs lyrics, not performed in the sincerely bummed attitude of the above named albums. I hate arguing on ILX, but this is a deeply weird comparison to me.

(I'll concede that "One Foot" lacks the whizz-bang weirdness of the other mid-1990s Beck releases.)

(I'm probably being a bit of a jerk here - I guess I just hear One Foot as vividly separate from those other records.)

Midnite Vultures (1999)

Finally decided, voting
Odelay.

Definitely One Foot in the Grave.

Favorite thing is still the non-album "Mexico." Not into much of him after that era.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubHZid-n6eQ

Odelay > OFITG > Midnite Vultures > Mellow Gold > Mutations > the rest. Another day this ordering would change.

Going with Odelay, which is how I discovered his music in the first place. I absolutely hated Midnite Vultures when it came out because it exudes sheer fun.

Pixelated doctors
Realistic tears

Could have voted MG, went with Odelay, but those two records plus One Foot, were definitely baked into my life circa 94-96, I still probably know all the words to Odelay. MV I could never get into though I haven't attempted to listen to it in 20 yrs. Everything else feels so joyless and I dunno...I saw him on the Odelay tour and it was bonkers and so much fun and I saw him on the tour he did with the Flaming Lips and it was soul crushing.

lol i saw some videos of them playing Beck songs, soul crushing indeed. Lips are a punk/noise act with one decent musician, Beck's music requires pro players.

Midnight Vultures turned me off initially (i remember feeling embarrassed for him during my first listen of "Hollywood Freaks") but i quickly came around to it. hearing the incredible b-sides helped (<3 "This is My Crew") but hearing "Get Real Paid" on a loud soundsystem while at a party a few years later sealed the deal that yes MV is something special.

see also "Nicotine And Gravy" - my favorite "deep cut" of his

the only MV b-side I recall really digging is "Salt In The Wound"

the would-be title track is really nice

"Dirty Dirty" is pretty sick too. like if Cornelius made a record with Prince

Arabian Nights also

oh man i love the ending of that, when it stops and the acoustic comes in and then you hear a rooster crow and the organ comes in. really captures the morning suddenly breaking after a crazy night.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Correct top two, though I'd reverse the order.

i don't need no wheels i don't need no gasoline
cos the wind that is blowing is blowing like a smoke machine

I will never understand the excessive praise this board has for Midnite Vultures.

^^otm

same for Mutations

http://i68.tinypic.com/2dskdpe.jpg

gonna vote Odelay, Dust Bros had one trick that worked well twice and never again but it was a really good trick.

Whoa, I thought MG had this for sure.

Only serious qualm is that OFITG is easily top four.

gonna vote Odelay, Dust Bros had one trick that worked well twice and never again but it was a really good trick

absolute nonsense,they had plenty of good records after Know How and Once Upon A Drive By

gonna vote Odelay, Dust Bros had one trick that worked well twice and never again but it was a really good trick.

― omar little, Monday, March 26, 2018 5:21 PM (two hours ago)

Wild Thing & Bust A Move?

read one post above you

(neither of those were produced by the Dust Brothers.)

My favorite albums. Funny how Beck became a rockist fall guy after his Grammy win but began as a prankster (with Tom Petty covering him quickly but whatever).

Ya good ranking, good list. I had Beck on my wall at one point! I tried to dress like him! I got off the bus with Mutations, and rank Stereopathetic Soul Manure as high as the other classic three. The strings on Sea Change are beautiful and Modern Guilt is overall terrific.

Bruh, u makin' me feel crazy, discussing OFITG songs I've never heard of and lo, I discover that there's a whole double-length deluxe version whose existence has eluded me. I know what I'm digging into this weekend.

Totally feel you on the Sea Change-induced sea change. I was so all-in up to that point, but what I've heard since hasn't promoted much effort to hear more.

No love for Stereopathetic? I mean, I know it's basically his comedy album, but still.

(neither of those were produced by the Dust Brothers.)

― just noticed tears shaped like florida. (sic), Tuesday, March 27, 2018 12:18 AM (seven months ago)

sorry for the delayed response but you don't know what you're talking about amigo!

agree almost exactly with the Soto ranking: One Foot a clear first, Mellow Gold and Odelay almost equal, but Midnite Vultures (the belated Ill Communication to Odelay's Check Your) ahead of Mutations, which is 163% borified by Godrich. Had time for all the pre-Mellow material - Western Harvest, Golden Feelings, Stereopathetic, Mexico - but nothing from this millennium has stuck, even if it sounded perfectly fine at the time. Which Sea Change never did.

sorry for the delayed response but you don't know what you're talking about amigo!

both of those (and nearly all of both debut albums) were produced by Matt Dike and Michael Ross

Then there's:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LK_7VwuK6E

one foot in the grave is my favorite, too. i love "i've seen the land beyond"

I'll never get the antipathy to Mutations, it's always been my fave

I'm with you.

I would rank:
Mellow>Midnite>”the wanderer” on the air album>stereopathetic

I tend to rate Midnite much higher and Mutations much lower than most. Have listened to both recently and the degree of my esteem remains unchanged (the former is fun and funny and still feels like an on-the-nose surreal repurposing of its era, the latter is still fine but kind of a snooze with only a small handful of very good songs). Odelay is great but it doesn't quite resonate for me the way his earlier stuff does (although the expanded deluxe version bumps it up the list). I think Mellow is my favorite but in actuality my answer would probably be '1994'.

for the record the line on “beercan” is “I quit my job blowin leaves,” probably my favorite moment in the song

I've heard a couple of the most recent singles on the radio and darned if they don't sound more or less like Cut Copy.

Tomorrow's MSG show with Phoenix is substantially undersold - secondary market seats as cheap as $30 (including all fees!) on TM and Stubhub. I wonder if they'll slash the unsold seats tomorrow by half or simply close the top section and move everyone down?

2003 called

It’s like beck decided on 12/31/99 to suck from then on

Every album up to The Information is really good (though even The Information feels weighed down by a ton of filler on the back end - he should've capped that one at a lean ten tracks for a solid album).

Modern Guilt does nothing for me, but others seem to think it's all right. Morning Phase doesn't really add anything new to his body of work, but it's a fine album. Colors is disposable but enjoyable fluff. The last one does nothing for me. Not sure if he'll ever surprise us with a really good album again, but he still puts on a good show.

separate beck poll for everything post sea change. i'd guess he's gotten that weezer old v. current fandom at this point.

His vocals on "Sea Change" are so dreary that I find it hard to listen to the entire album.

I'd buy the shit out of a Mellow Gold deluxe edition thingie with bonus rare and compilation tracks and assorted whatnot