Beck Albums Poll

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

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