Cause when our POLL did meet, Girl you know I was packin' heat! - ILM Artist Poll #97 - BECK (Voting is open until Saturday, June 1, 2019)

wait there's an Odelay version ?!?!?

that song rules, definitely making my ballot

check out the deluxe version of odelay!

just looked it up, whoa man I have gotta get that!

never heard either "Inferno" or "Gold Chains", this makes my day

gahh so many tracks I've never heard, all those radio show one-offs

https://www.discogs.com/robot-jazz-vol-1-6/release/11220708

YSI?

I was v excited to hear "Inferno" and "Gold Chains" when the deluxe odelay came out but ended up finding them a bit disappointing, I guess they each contained samples that were deemed too expensive to clear, and so were reworked/rerecorded to a certain extent supposedly? I feel like I can hear it, they each sound like theyre missing a little something compared to the dense sound of the other odelay party jams. "Inferno" fairly wild but still sounds like a dress rehearsal for "High 5" to me.

reading up on our friend Beck while listening to his catalogue last night and learned he just split with his wife of 15 years (Giovani Ribisi's twin sister), that's a drag.

Apparently he released a new single with Pharrell last month?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXrlWw3yhW4

love that odelay is one of those cd-era albums that informs you when the first side ends and the second side starts

stuck together like a readymade!

"inferno" is absolutely amazing but i can barely evaluate it as a "song" to "vote" "for"

"where it's at" song/video combo weirded me out pretty hard when i was a kid, like i couldn't even figure the song out enough to know if i liked it, but when "the new pollution" video hit mtv it was like nothing i had ever seen or heard before (of course it was actually several things that had been seen or heard before combined) and i looooved dancing along to it in my room

he also played some sort of mtv show that year (vmas? probably?) and i spent the whole time thinking "this music is great and he's dancing so much but how is this guy considered cool? he looks like a huge dork like me!" tbf i was in elementary school and did not know what cool was

But you knew what a dork was, right?

yeah it was me

Have we as a board discussed how Beck would be beyond cancelled if he released Mixed Bizness today?

have we as a board decided we're not going to debate National Review headlines?

Midnite Vultures I mean

it sucked then and it still sucks

lol I respectfully disagree

The second half (except "Debra") >>> first half

just gonna leave this here

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

midnite vultures rules so much, i have no idea how he made some of the ridiculous ideas on it work

huh one foot in the grave is a really good album

yes, it really is, I think "Hollow Log" placed in the recent "Best Songs Under 120 Seconds" poll?

thirded

"forcefield" is prob gonna be high on my ballot but it's early

“Beautiful way” is nice
The backing track of “Hollywood freaks” is nice
The chorus of “milk and honey” is pretty slammin

Re:Midnite Vultures, I think about that sometimes. I was young so I could be wrong, but I feel like I remember a vibe of some corners of white altrock people reading it, approvingly, as a joke/parody. Like "LOL Beck the wacky loser guy doing an R&B album, that guy'll do anything, what a laff!" (Or maybe thats just me remembering the reactions of my dumbass white suburban friends.) Where today obviously the criticism would come from the opposite angle, like "how dare he not treat these musics reverentially".

Beautiful Way will be on my ballot for sure

I remember a 30 second snippet of "Beautiful Way" being included as part of Windows 2000, playing it in Windows Media Player and the cover art coming up, and being like "wow i am truly living in the future"

"nicotine & gravy" will be in my top 5 for sure

I've been listening to Beck in the car the past few days...well, Mellow Gold. A Beck poll is not the best place for misgivings, but:

1) I think half of Mellow Gold is good to great to borderline genius ("Loser").
2) I tried Odelay!, too. Two songs I still love ("Devil's Haircut," "Jackass"), another good, lengthy, low-key closer, and past that a whole lot of nothing. Which I think is what I thought at the time. It won Pazz & Jop (I think it did, anyway) on sheer momentum from Mellow Gold.
3) I voted for a couple of later songs in Pazz & Jop that I keep on my hard drive, "Chemtrails" and "Don't Let It Go." Listening to them right now, especially next to Mellow Gold's best songs, they seem quite marginal.

He'll make it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (next year?), which he should.

yeah that's maybe my favorite Beck deep cut when I DJ out

i don't think i've ever heard all of mutations before today. production on that album is really something. timelessness is not a quality i care about v much but there's a really beautiful out of time feeling to the whole record

Justin Meldal-Johnsen – bass, percussion, background vocals
Roger Manning – synthesizer, organ, keyboards, harpsichord, background vocals, percussion

ah i see this album marks the appearance of my main dudes

I'm not sure about the whole 'Momentum from Mellow Gold' thing. Prior to Odelay, a lot of people were ready to write him off as a one-hit wonder even though he had cultivated a bit of a cult following (and accrued more indie cred) thanks to OFITG. Then Odelay and "Where It's At" arrived, and suddenly HE WAS THE GUY. I remember reading some article about another artist (Garbage maybe?) in Spin wherein the writer was talking about the '97 Grammies w/Beck as "The Appointed 'Cool Guest'". To me, this was less about surfing momentum, and more like beating the odds by delivering the goods.

It's kind of forgotten now, but according to Beck, he claimed* that prior to the Dust Bros. sessions, he actually had recorded another album of what he described as guitar rock songs (of which, I think only "Minus" was released), but elected to not release it as he felt that style was passe`. I get the feeling if he had put that record out, we wouldn't be talking about him as much now (or then).

*I say 'claimed' because I just checked wiki and the unreleased album mentioned there doesn't match the stylistic description. Also: Beck is a world-class bullshitter.

a lot of people were ready to write him off as a one-hit wonder

I think there's some truth to that, and I used to find the parallel there to Eminem really interesting: he went from the novelty of "My Name Is" to perennial Pazz & Jop guy a year later. But I also remember critical excitement over "Where's It At" (which for me was a mildly amusing cipher at best) and thinking yes, he was the guy all of sudden, but seemingly because a lot of critics had decided that in advance. Which is not unusual with follow-ups to much-discussed breakthrough albums. Except for the three songs I mentioned above, I just don't hear anything else on the album.

i don't think i've ever heard all of mutations before today

WHAT

Waronker does a great job on that one when he's called upon, also ("Diamond Bollocks" mostly)

Mutations has always been my fave and nothing will budge it

Same -- Lazy Flies is all-time for me, partly because of the vocab (magistrate, debris, mangroves, sulphur, trawlers, opiates, syphilis, matrons, gigolos) but also because of whatever Waronker is doing in the second half.

Sunday Sun!

He did "Debra" on the Odelay tour in the UK, saw it in Brixton. I remarked that he could do that high-singing (not falsetto, don't know what you'd call it) better than Prince. Too well, to be a parody as such.

midnite vultures is still my favorite maximalist r&b kazoo party

the banjo in "sexx laws" alone

i did not know that eye from boredoms designed the album art

xp yeah and all the slide guitar!

i really love those dissonant strings in the middle of "nicotine & gravy" and the arabic-sounding (? what's the name for that scale anyway?) breakdown at the end of it. it's a real kitchen sink sort of album in the best way

"get real paid" is an astonishing soundworld and yet also lean and funky, i guess beck can have it both ways!!!!

did not completely understand whiney's "canceled" comment until i remembered what "hollywood freaks" is like

I was one of those listeners put off by the air of one hit wonder to avoid buying Mellow Gold but jumped on board with Mellow Gold -- with reservations. Relistening last night, I admired its commitment to get-fresh flow and the range of samples and, like in 1996-1997, never quite warmed to it. I still like Mutations as a winningly secondhand channeling of folk and tropicalia tropes; he's connecting with sound and skill, not with lyrics. Midnite Vultures impressed a lot of my friends who had never heard an Oran "Juice" Jones record. Like I posted yesterday, the more traditional Beck songs on the second side ("Milk and Honey," "Beautiful Way") boasted a tightness made possible only by the mostly failed electrofunk approximations on the first side. By the time he released Sea Change he so disgusted me with this accommodation to the sincerity market that not even the decent Guero (which people tend to forget saved his ass commercially) was enough to win me back.

I still admire him as a producer, most recently on the Jenny Lewis album.