Beck: Classic Or Dud

I prefer masks! Even before COVID!

I prefer "depressed in my mansion" Beck. I don't need masks or personae from him because he's kind of blank even at his most "revealing".

https://frinkiac.com/meme/S07E08/1229944.jpg?b64lines=SG93IGFib3V0IGEgbGl0dGxlIGZyb20KIGNvbHVtbiAiYSIgYW5kIGEgbGl0dGxlIGZyb20KIGNvbHVtbiAiYiI_

I was just about to make a '94 Beck poll and realized that the album tracks alone constitute about 50 songs and it would just be wrong to omit EPs and b-sides and unreleased songs that were later released so I don't even know what to do right now except to concur that '94 was indeed the best of all Beck years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oWtgaD77ek

Best Beck song imo

I didn't realize he put out three different versions of this song.

Yeah for a long time I was only aware of the one I posted (with that dog. assist), which I first heard on the Stray Blues Japanese B-sides collection. The other two are lo-fi solo acoustic, pretty cool but not as magical as the final "polished" version

1994-1996 for me, it was so weird how he went from like "only for weirdos & burn-outs" to mega-hit star like literally overnight. I saw him in 96 and it was awesome, but nothing after Odelay ever really interested me and I saw the tour with the Flaming Lips and it might have been one of the most miserable concerts I've ever sat through.

Listening to Mellow Gold now for the first time since the Clinton yrs and it is still awesome

i think odelay is great but for me it suffers from that common problem where its hard to listen now and reconnect with how strange and exciting it sounded back then. mellow gold though for some reason still manages to sound mysterious and fresh every time i go back to it

I don't think I can relate to that argument. Granted I wasn't listening to Odelay in 1996, but next to anything I hear from that time, it still stands out as unusual and forward-thinking. Even now, there's an especially dense, jarring collage-like quality to it that makes it stand out from comparatively simpler and more polished productions that I might hear today. The same goes for Paul's Boutique, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, a lot of Sly & the Family Stone and Sgt. Pepper. They may be old, but they're still as striking as a Jasper Johns painting and familiarity hasn't dulled that, much less the mainstream culture they've helped make more interesting.

He really needs an early years compilation/box to gather up the early singles, Western Harvest and Golden Feelings. (Maybe even Stereopathetic, but that one is at least easy enough to find on CD).

his b-sides used to be something i really looked forward to. idk if this is my single favorite beck song, but it ranks very high:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ejs7Bk3R24

("one of these days" from the cold brains ep)

and yes, stray blues rules.

I really wish I would have been more on the ball in grabbing stuff like Cold Brains and Stray Blues. I was hoping for more deluxe editions for Mutations and Midnite Vultures, I loved how the Odelay one pulled a lot of those together.

mutations deluxe edition would be rad. i wonder if there's any outtakes for that stuff?

listening to modern guilt for the first time in at least six or seven years right now and it's way better than i remember it. i would have given it a solid 3.5 stars / 7.5 at the time, but right now i kind of feel like that's underrating it. "chemtrails" is such a weirdly gorgeous song. i wonder how much input danger mouse actually had in the album? anyway, good album. kinda forgot about it. maybe today's the day i finally listen to colors.

okay after listening, the second half of modern guilt isn't as good and i'm now more comfortable with my initial assessment. it's not bad, just kind of competent and groovy. overall, it's an album that sounds great while it's playing, but doesn't really stay with me after it's ended, outside of "chemtrails" — which, again, what a fascinating and eerie tune. easily the highlight for me. anyway. yeah.

chemtrails is insanely good, one of his best in that lush widescreen mode. but yeah, aside from that and a few others, lots of the tracks on Modern Guilt sound good when theyre playing, but i'll have completely forgotten them before the next track starts.

inspired by this thread & birdistheword's tracklist I went back to The Information for the first time in idk how long, sliced out the fat, added in a couple stray tracks from that era, and wound up with a tight 45 minute psych rock album that i'm going to be listening to a lot more than the original.

this is one of the additions, one i've always liked a lot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxLq1Low_II

hey, never heard that one before! it's really good — kalimba!! hooray!!

Ah nice! Was "Sorrow" an actual outtake? I looked it up but the only info I got was that it was a download-only track from 2005 that's never been issued on a record. It sounds like it could have been recorded with Godrich.

yeah there was a small batch of tracks that were posted on his site in 2005 that i always really dug, other ones i liked are called "day for night" and "untitled song 2". i'm not sure if/how theyre related to the Information, ive never found any info on the credits for them at all. they definitely sound closer to the kind of stuff he does with godrich than anything else. at any rate they sound good mixed in with the more low-key Information tracks.

bummer that theyve never been made available in higher quality

How come I'd never heard "One of These Days"? It's wonderful.

You just know dude has whole hard drives of unheard/underheard material. Gotta wonder what it would take to legitimize a formal box set release or something

The upside of signing to a big label and becoming famous is having access to talented producers/collaborators and ideal recording situations

The downside is that (probably) you and your bosses are skittish about what to put out

Id bet that if Beck were a free agent we’d have heard much more from him. Somewhere there’s a Beck ska record (some of these things maybe never need to see the light of day)

yeah ive lost track of the # of artists & producers that beck has said he recorded most or all of an album with and then just filed it away. i would pay a lot of money for a Neil Young Archives type site from him, one of the few artists i can think of who has the vault to justify it

He did an interview where he said someone (his management or someone at Universal) told him that a lot of his unreleased work was destroyed in the infamous 2008 fire. This was retracted later on, but given how Universal was doing everything they can to spin that story in order to minimize the fallout, who knows.

Since you guys seem to be way more knowledgeable than me on his career, do you know where those 2013 standalone singles came from? I thought he was teasing a new sound but then he released Morning Phase which went into a completely different direction.

iirc he was working on a full album of that sound but shelved it and decided to only put out those tracks from it, something like that

Man that new single sucks - this guy sure aged fast.

It's kind of what happens when an artist gets truckloads of awards thrown at their more boring albums.

Not to begrudge the dude's success, but I think Beck could have had a more interesting career trajectory if he wasn't showered with praise for his more "safe" records.

I’d love to read a long, contemporary, in-depth interview with him - what is his life like? How does he decide what to release? Are there hard drives full of crazy stuff in his basement none of us will ever hear?

I think Beck could have had a more interesting career trajectory if he hadn't been forced back into the Scient0logy fold (iirc after Midnite Vultures), seemingly somewhat against his will

Another formerly genuinely interesting underground artist lost to the beach ball in the day-glo crowd / Coachella festival scene.

I wasn't a fan of his last album either, butv'Loser' was released over 30 years ago - I wouldn't say he's aged fast, the guy's been around a long, long time. (IMO his last top-shelf album was The Information though it should've been cut down to ten tracks. There's a couple of later albums I've grown to enjoy, but I don't think they really add anything substantial to his legacy.)

He's only two years away from releasing his dealing-with-mortality Time Out of Mind.

Wow that is a nutty thing to contemplate. Beck is old!

Kinda half-agree with jon. Mellow Gold/Stereopathetic/Grave/Odelay are formative albums for me, and the only records Beck has made since then that I've made proper time for have been The Information and Modern Guilt. (I admire Midnite Vultures but find it lacks the unhinged, unpolished quality that made his previous "wild" records pop.)

The best thing he's done is probably giving James Gadson songwriting/publishing credit on Sea Change.

My favourite song of his is the bonus track on Mutations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeohGiH6v9g

It sounds like a cover of a cover of a cover of Tomorrow Never Knows

that song is so sick

If only that vibe was sustained over an entire album! It's the "The Flaming Lips could never" song

All of the extraneous tracks from Mutations are great.

ya, runners dial zero is Quite the Vibe too

Yep.

I saw him in 2014 and thought he was very entertaining, if a little removed from the audience. Pretty much the way I feel about his albums also.

he prob still puts on a good show I would imagine, the one I saw after Sea Change was very good

very much co-sign the extra Mutations tracks, he has many many superb B-sides, comp tracks, and oddities

POX just off the top of my head
"Corvette Bummer"
"Dirty Dirty"
Cornelius remix of "Mixed Bizness"
"Mexico"
"Diamond Bollocks"
"Strange Invitation"
"Deadweight"
"Midnite Vultures"
"Spanking Room"
"Got No Mind"

My favourite song of his is the bonus track on Mutations

It sounds like a cover of a cover of a cover of Tomorrow Never Knows

― pee change (flamboyant goon tie included), Monday, February 20, 2023 2:40 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Uh :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcfjChmxoT4

If only that vibe was sustained over an entire album! It's the "The Flaming Lips could never" song

― pee change (flamboyant goon tie included), Monday, 20 February 2023 19:44 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Mansun's Six is kind of this btw! Another flawless victory for late-90s Pro Tools abuse. The title track especially makes me think of Diamond Bollocks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhEi2cBpoAk

(Draper obvs cancelled as hell now or w/e but this goes)

He's only two years away from releasing his dealing-with-mortality Time Out of Mind.

― Halfway there but for you, Monday, February 20, 2023 12:27 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

You honestly just broke my brain w/this.

didn't he release his TOOM in 2002

Diamond Bollocks is so great. Not sure I really make the Six connection, though.

Beck isn't old because he looks about 37.

The connection presumably has to do with the song structure and edits but Six is obv a taste apocalypse full of adolescent angst whereas Diamond Bollocks takes the 60's dayglo poster paint Flips thing minus drugs plus Morricone or something.