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)

another born-into-it devotee

(like, literally: Beck's mother delivered the Ribisii)

Maybe the poll *won't* be just a bunch of 'Odelay' tracks?

This is a v tough call putting my ballot together, on the one hand there are many nonalbum/outtakes that undoubtedly rank among my favorite beck tracks, but on the other hand its hard to seriously make the case that "Where Its At" and "Loser" &c are NOT among the 25 best songs in his catalog. I suspect I'll end up adding the hits but underrating them in anticipation of them being on p much everyone's ballot.

i put on sea change today and feel like i've been listening to it for 13 years. boy are "lonesome tears," "sunday sun," and "little one" great though. feel like even beck takes a nap during "round the bend"

"sunday sun" p much the only song on that record that actually has mutations energy

The contrasting takes on "it's all in your mind" say it all really

I'm so repulsed by the idea of Beck trying to Mean It that I can't relisten to Sea Change.

he's got several "Word on a Wing"s in his catalog, but he recorded them earlier in his career.

mutations is a top one for me besides the more obvious prior highlights, and i kind of liked modern guilt a lot actually

I remember being stoked to download the leaked version of Guero at the time, excited about the talk that he was back with the Dust Bros, and being generally disappointed except for two tracks that immediately stood head & shoulders above the rest, to my ears: "Send A Message To Her", which was the only track that successfully captured that manic collage feel of his 90s rockers without sounding tired or forced, and "Scarecrow", which in the leaked version was a 7-minute groove that included a long harmonica solo and felt like an extension of earlier songs like "Steal My Body Home" - I could not stop listening to it at the time. Then when I finally got the official release of the album "Send A Message" wasnt on it and "Scarecrow" was edited down to a weird cluttered single-length version that was impossible for me to enjoy after living with the 7 minute original version. So that whole record has the air of a letdown for me. Those two tracks and "Missing" are the only ones from that disc I ever dust off to listen to.

i think "girl" is wonderful and it'll be high on my ballot. still figuring out how i feel about guero though i like it much more than sea change

I gave Guero a listen on our weekend road trip, I wasn't super impressed and I don't think anything from it will make my ballot. It's a fine record and a breezy listen but it sounds like a scientifically engineered midpoint between Odelay and Midnite Vultures. Kinda sterile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jRGe5WbNuc

"scarecrow" is a really awesome song both edited and unedited

also like "go it alone" and "broken drum"; i think guero figures out what it wants to be in the second half (loose jammy bluesy acoustic record with the dust bros). i baseline like every song though, even if they don't manage the sonic depth of odelay the ways that singer-songwriter beck tries to flatten out postmodern pop beck ("missing" and "earthquake weather" for example) are really fascinating to me

also completely ridiculous "send a message to her" wasn't on the record, like cutting "the new pollution" from your album

huh I never knew Jack White wrote "Go It Alone"!

the black keys rode the sound of "go it alone" straight to the bank

i listened to the information a lot when it came out and i remember almost nothing about it beyond the singles. i have very little sense of what this album is trying to do (beck, pretty reductively and to his discredit, described it as a folding together of mutations/sea change with odelay but there's WAY more of that on guero) and the songs are mostly not there beyond some ear-catching detail in the production. but then once in a while the clutter recedes and the space clears around an excellent late beck song, cf. "cellphone's dead" and "new round"

still you can sure tell it took three years of on-again off-again sessions to record, what an overload of... restraint?

huh I never knew Jack White wrote "Go It Alone"!

― Emperor Tonetta Ketchup (sleeve), Tuesday, May 28, 2019

I think he's credited with bass too.

"Exoskeleton" section contains dialogue spoken by Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze.

ugh no none of this

post-information non-album single "timebomb" RULES though

otm time bomb is the shit

I'm surprised how often I've heard "Colors" in the wild. Also, my students' college radio station put it in rotation in 2017.

modern guilt is pretty fantastic tbh

misread that as morning phase for a sec and was about to extend you an invitation to join the recording academy

I wonder if anyone will join me in voting for Colors and Morning Phase, and a few tracks from each? Maybe it was the result of having skipped all his 00s albums but I'm pretty fond of both. Absence makes, etc.

My favourite version of It's All In Your Mind is on The Bridge School Concerts, Vol. 1 (1997). Took me a while to appreciate the one he later released on Sea Change with a slightly altered melody and added instrumentation, but I still think that Bridge Benefit performance tops it. The One Foot In The Grave outtake is okay too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEN0NIkFHYA

first round of confirmation emails are going out...i will let you know when all have been added to the spreadsheet.

I forgot about that Bridge School version of "Mind", that really is a great recording.

While I've still got zero interest in in Colors - that Greg Kurstin pop production is definitively Not For Me - this thread may have convinced me to give Morning Phase a spin for the first time(even though my ballot's already in). Revisiting the 00's stuff makes me think that even if it doesnt fully satisfy there might be a few tracks that click with me.

all confirmation emails have been sent out, if you didn't get one please resend.

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Asking for help, I need someone who would be willing to help out with the images for the main poll. If anyone has the time and wants to help with the images for this poll, email the Beck email address above. I would really, really appreciate it as I don't have enough time to also do some good images. Besides, collaboration polls I feel are the best ones on ILM anyways.

Morning Phase is just a fairly pointless album to me - I like Sea Change a lot more than quite a few people here seem to but it certainly wasn't in need of a sequel. "Blue Moon" is a nice enough song but nothing else really stands out from it.

Colors also doesn't do much for me, the pop production doesn't really suit him and ends up making him feel pretty anonymous. it mostly feels like Cut Copy b-sides

q: are you folding all the votes for "got no mind" into "pay no mind"? same question for all the different versions of "jack-ass"

p.s. the odelay b-sides are all so so so great

xp my vote is yes to the Jackass versions, but "Got No Mind" is significantly different lyrically and should be separate imo (plus it is better)

i'm kinda down for folding them into each other bc then "pay no mind" would prob be top twenty if not higher. i do like that he sings "give the finger to the folk singer" instead of "rock n roll singer" in "got no mind"

19 (!) B-sides on Odelay?! I know some are remixes, but that's a lot of listening.

and one foot in the grave has 16 b-sides. and mellow gold has at least five or six that are not imported from golden feelings, and every album after odelay has 3-4 b-sides at least etc.

Just realized I forgot to vote for this gorgeous Carter Family cover, oh well

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

there's only 3 remixes on the Odelay deluxe edition, and it does leave out "Diskobox" and a few remixes, while including some previously unreleased tracks ("Inferno" is the coolest thing on the deluxe edition by far, a 7 minute freakout) and "Deadweight" (hope people don't forget about this, being a non-album single and all) and its b-sides too

idk if i'll vote for anything else from it except "Deadweight" and maybe "Inferno", though the alt versions of "Jack-Ass" are really great

weird, there's like half a dozen remixes of "Where It's At" and "Devil's Jukebox" alone!

I have spent zero time with any of the expanded reissues, gonna be doing some listening in the next few days

this is a very difficult but very fun ballot to assemble. it's also wild to go through his whole catalog bc it feels like he's five different artists in the '90s and only two thereafter

i'd generously put it at three different artists

Help Wanted

Can someone help me out with images please? Email the box.

Btw, this is going to be such an amazing poll by looking at the ballots. We are in for a treat.

and one foot in the grave has 16 b-sides.

?? there weren’t any singles from One Foot In The Grave

it’s probably part of why it’s always felt so singular and distinctive among his first batch of full-on albums, even apart from being the best

(there was a K / Calvin 7” out later that had the three bonus tracks from the Australian CD, which I resented mildly when I realised the existence of, having bought the LP on import)

think Brad is referring to the 2CD expanded version, but yeah none of those were actually released at the time except the K Records single

these dang millennials & their not knowing what a single was

I had to walk ten minutes to the station, wait 29 minutes for a train, ride 50 minutes to the city and spend $30 of paper route money just to HEAR He’s A Mighty Good Leader

Haha