Beck: Classic Or Dud

JMJ is a lifelong scientologist and his parents are very high level scinos.

― kurt schwitterz, Tuesday, February 21, 2023 3:41 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

and it's weird in like every interview he has a different story about how him and beck met instead of just saying "we grew up in scientology together" theres shady shit goin on there

― kurt schwitterz, Tuesday, February 21, 2023 3:43 PM

wonder about this a lot myself.

I had the radio going and they were talking about beck leaving Scientology and then getting “dragged back in” - but I had no clue what specifically they were talking about

I saw Beck at the Irving Plaza last year

( and the video someone took of it is still up! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8XRl8OJLDQ )

GREAT show, but I was struck by how much older he looked. I actually got to meet him in late 2002, and I thought back to that moment when he was already in his 30's but looking not much older than the college or high school-age fans surrounding him - the change really made that seem like a looooong time ago.

no idea about him "getting dragged back in" but a few years ago he claimed he'd never been a scientologist in an interview but that was largely seen as a way to distance himself from it without attracting too much hostility from the church

https://www.thedailybeast.com/beck-claims-he-was-never-a-scientologist-leah-remini-and-others-are-calling-bs

Ya well James Jamerson was a Baptist so what

yah it doesnt take away from his greatness and its whatever but its ok to ask why all the lies, secrecy and diversion tactics? his family is famously scientologist, he famously grew up in it, surrounds himself with other scientologists, is married to a famous scientologist with a famous scientologist family. if he was just like "yah my dad got into it in the 60s and its always been a part of my life" no one would care.

anyway im stoked and hopeful about a new slow sad album

“Lies, secrecy and diversion tactics” seem to constitute him just saying over and over that his dad is a Scientologist and he grew up around it but he’s not personally into it

“But his wife is a Scientologist” and “but his bassist is a Scientologist (and Trent Reznor is ok with it)” aren’t particularly convincing gotchas, Kate Briquelet!

tbf to schwitterz, he's iirc known a lot of people deeply affected by this stuff, lives in the eye of the storm so to speak

I managed to avoid saying I Don’t Belieeeeve It like I do every time she mentions that last one, hope you’re proud of me.

I'm unable to even think of the Beck album without Victor coming to mind

The Information is my favourite of the not 90s albums, though I find it nearly identical to Guero.

The Information is my favourite of the not 90s albums, though I find it nearly identical to Guero.

I heard a new Beck song today and it was so fucking boring that I changed the channel and "Comfortably Numb" on the classic rock station sounded like hearing it for the first time. And then they played "Eye of the Tiger," and I was like that Vince McMahon meme.

just listened to colors for the first time and it's very hit and miss. some really faceless unironic pastiche (this is the majority of it tbh) and some genuinely good second tier beck. i had forgotten about "dreams" - that's a good one! and "no distraction" is great too. not a total waste of time, but yeah, probably my least favorite thing he's done.

a few songs into hyperspace right now (first ever listen) and i really like it. sure, nothing is jumping out or hitting me in a "SUPER WOW!" kind of way, but it sounds good. a bit goofy and maybe too self-aware, but it certainly has that spirit of, "hey here's a mishmash of cool genreless pop sounds" that made his 90s records so appealing. if i didn't know pharrell had anything to do with it going in, i'm not sure i would've made the connection otherwise. *shrug* i kinda like it. will check back in after i get through it.

Vegas residency when

colors def has that vibe, yeah.

but idk, after getting through hyperspace i think it's absolutely second tier but still very good. like i said, it has an overall sound that i dig. cool synths doing cool harmonies and whatever. some of the hooks are quite good and the title track is some weird, polite kraut revival space pop.

neither album would get rated over anything that came before it.

Tried to rock out to Odelay today, and the magic is gone. Mellow Gold 4-evah

MG>O

I enjoy Odelay more now

Alcohol on my hands I got plans to ditch myself and get outside

should i not give beck a try??

oh no i just put on an album!

which one??

Modern Guilt. i'm feeling it so far!

don't know that one at all!

i'm weird i like diving in late in a catalog sometimes

(although i guess not that late, i see there was an album last year)

Modern Guilt might actually be my favourite Beck record: it's a compact ten songs, and sits directly in the middle of his depressive-acoustic to whimsical-rhythmic spectrum.

I would start with Mellow Gold. What a fun record. Totally different than Modern Guilt (as the titles suggest!)

haha yeah v different vibes as far as titles go

just started mellow gold, i remember my stepdad listening to this record when i was a kid

Beck '93-'94 is just completely unstoppable. I've listened to the four albums + related material released during that period an uncountable number of times.

i like "motherfucker"

One Foot in the Grave is my favorite along with the grab bag Stereopathetic Soulmanure. Can’t stand anything he’s done since the turn of the millennium.

All Beck is good but the first four* albums are so good that everything afterward is gently disappointing

*Mellow Gold, OFITG, Stereopathetic, Odelay

(I know there are other albums before then. I’ve heard them! Once, and probably not again)

chokin' like a one-man Dust Bowl

Now I’m running like a flaming pig

Awww yeah

mah goodness

Talkin’ to Cole/Get doooown

Leaping up into the air, gettin’ juiced up beyond belief

yep Beercan is A++

i guess i did listen to Odelay a lot growing up too, def remember some of it. enjoying my beck day.

Beck was a top-five guy for me as a teen all the way up through Midnight Vultures, but he lost me with a Sea Change. I’m sure you could put together a killer album-plus worth of stuff since but I haven’t kept up with him in ages.

Midnight Vultires was deeply disappointing to me, I’d loved all his output until then. I got back on board for Sea Change but I don’t think I’ve listened to anything since at all.

I really liked Odelay and Midnight Vultures, but now they don't do much for me. Mellow Gold has staying power.

Yeah, all the ‘93-94 stuff is really the stuff that has stuck with me through the years. Even a lot of the B-sides go crazy: “Alcohol,” “Spanking Room,” “Totally Confused”

I get off after Sea Change but I will say that “Girl” is possibly the best song he’s done in the last 25 years.

I've grown to enjoy most of his records, even Midnite Vultures (sic). Modern Guilty and Hyperspace are the exceptions, but I'll revisit Modern Guilty again. (FWIW, he still puts on an amazing eye-popping show. This guy recorded every number and put it on YouTube - he even got a good chunk of Phoenix's set: http://www.youtube.com/@AntonioJoSeis )

There are some albums that are better and more "important" than the rest, but I kind of view Beck the way I'd view Prince - even when he isn't breaking new ground, he's still making solid music that's distinctly his own. There used to be a site called "Prince in Print" where you saw how critics back in the day were kind of hard on Prince - it collected all the real-time assessments and you got the impression that even in the 1980s, at the height of his creativity, their take on Prince was that his output in general was very uneven. I don't think he was making perfect albums, but In hindsight it felt like they were severely undervaluing their strengths, the elements that made those records uniquely Prince. That came to mind when I later revisited the Beck albums I didn't like as much as, say, Odelay, and that's probably why I appreciate everything a lot more now.

*every number at Hartford, CT last year

Not unlike Prince, he seems to have a formidable & tantalizing vault – he’s always referencing unreleased genre exercises, collabs, scrapped albums, finished albums that were shelved, etc. Idk about these days, but it seems like at least for a big portion of his career he was constantly chasing ideas, keeping up the same recording pace as the early-90s but just releasing less & less. I’m patiently waiting for him to reach a point in his career where he does some kind of Neil Young Archives thing or vault-scraping box set or something.

I owned five guayaberas because of Beck. I saw a nice photo of him in the Toronto Star and I clipped it out and put it up in my music corner and I'd practice with Beck staring at me.

Mutations through Sea Change is not what I want when I put on a Beck album. Normal albums with normal merits. I like Beck when he makes abnormal albums with abnormal merits.