Beck Albums Poll

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.