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

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