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)

“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.

and I should say that Mellow Gold and One Foot in the Grave remain astonishments

"peaches & cream" is like a perfect nexus of at least two strains of beck's career, the groove is extremely mellow gold and he is singing a prince song on top of it

YHF and Sea Change ending as the year's top two albums in P&J's 2002 was the first time I felt adrift as a listener and critic.

holy shit "milk & honey," i forgot how good this song is????

Johnny Marr in the outro!

this song is the actual nexus of beck's career

it has everything

god the b-side would-be title track is so good, criminal it got left off

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

― american bradass (BradNelson), Friday, May 24, 2019 8:24 AM (fifty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I still don't quite get why this song is significantly more objectionable than most of what he was recording around this time. is there something to it beyond cultural appropriation/playing black culture for laffs? which I don't personally put much stock in, I feel like Beck's homage/pastiche is generally fond and not cheap.

a specifically g-funk pastiche sits weird with me, i'll have to think about it more

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`.

Thats interesting, I read a similar story once but with a different style -- that he initially wanted to follow Mellow Gold with a serious downer singer-songwriter album and recorded "Ramshackle" and eventual b-sides "Feather In Your Cap" and "Brother" in those sessions, before changing his mind and hooking up with the Dust Brothers.

It's easy to imagine him after Mellow Gold, having had this major breakout success and all this youthful energy, being so interested in so many different sounds and styles and being fairly effortless at achieving them, it must have seemed like an impossible task trying to decide where to go musically. I read an interview once where he said that a few label execs told him Odelay was a career-ending mistake and it really shook him, but it was too late to change anything. He must have had some serious anxiety of influence around then.

He must have had some serious entitlement feelings after then.

https://www.discogs.com/label/688022-Not-On-Label-Beck-Self-released

Here's a pile of Beck cassettes that are impossible to find/hear/buy.

I have a few of those if anyone wants a YSI, just PM me and leave yr email

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.

― orifex, Friday, 24 May 2019 05:52 (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this will be very high on mine too

Thats interesting, I read a similar story once but with a different style -- that he initially wanted to follow Mellow Gold with a serious downer singer-songwriter album and recorded "Ramshackle" and eventual b-sides "Feather In Your Cap" and "Brother" in those sessions, before changing his mind and hooking up with the Dust Brothers.

That's why I added the asterisk, I hadn't heard about that album until yesterday, after having lived w/the thought of the rock album for years. It might just be down to the story Beck felt like telling that day, as there's more evidence of the acoustic record existing.

That said, what is the deal w/"Minus"--different sound & producers than the rest of Odelay.

tbh I think its likely that both stories are true - mellow gold is such a scattershot of styles, its easy to imagine him trying out different sessions trying to decide between "Blackhole", "Loser", or "Mutherfuker".

"Minus" is a weird track for sure. I like it on Odelay but not sure if I could hang with a whole album of that.

wow so it turns out mutations is an extremely amazing record, "lazy flies" will also be high on my ballot but i could vote for almost all of it

gonna re-listen to that one tonight

'Minus' really is the odd one out on Odelay. Always felt like he thought the album needed a 'Mutherfuker pt 2'.

Since "Hollywood Freaks" has come up, I found this from the NME in 2000 last night looking for Beck's oft-told P.Diddy story:

Beck also revealed the truth about his failed attempt at collaborating with Puff Daddy, and that the hip-hop star now snubs him.

“He was pursuing me heavily,” Beck said. “He basically came out on my tour and followed me around and then got me into the studio late one night and I threw down some awful vocals over some Elton John track with a hip-hop beat, and I was singing something about how expensive my hormones were, and it didn’t connect, and I never heard from him again. I’ve seen him at awards shows, he shook my hand once, and otherwise I didn’t really exist any more.

“It was like he was pursuing me and he had me, and I was discarded. I’m trying to get over it. But actually some of the tracks on my last album were from after that experience, I was inspired to write some songs, like what if that Puff Daddy track had worked out? ‘Hollywood Freaks’ was my fantasy of what Puff Daddy would do. That’s the kind of track I’d like to hear him do.”

cracked beatlesesque psychedelia achieved through really spare homespun-sounding instrumentation that's also beautifully layered, the arrangement of every song seems to ripple outward as it goes (i find it kind of funny that the nigel godrich paul mccartney record chaos and creation in the backyard is kinda... mutations 2)

I ride hard for "Sing It Again" off Mutations, especially that guitar solo - not sure if its Beck or Smokey Hormel playing it, but even 20 years later when I listen to that album and it gets to that part it feels like a total showstopper, espec with the simple acoustic arrangement and live feel of the recording after all the harpsichord and tropicalia and Godrich keyboards and etc that come before it. One of the great end-of-album comedown songs. Like I said upthread, I would kill for an album's worth of no-frills acoustic country like that from Beck, but its probably not to be.

yeah, beautiful song.

Weirdly I think "We Live Again" was my Beck gateway song. Heard it on a Mojo comp or something?

I think one of the main reasons Mutations is my favorite is that it's somehow much more successfully/convincingly aching than Sea Change turned out to be, without sacrificing any of the lyrical eccentricity of that period

otm

(if all of Sea Change vanished besides "Guess I'm Doing Fine" and "Paper Tiger" I'd be fine with that)