Beck: Classic Or Dud

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.

Odelay still completely rocks me, I’m still blown away by the great sampling, great keys and breaks and just weird wtf stuff like that random metal tapping solo during “lord only knows”.

see Odelay really doesnt grab me at all - all the wackiness sounds a bit forced. kinda suspect I was only pretending to like it at the time. Mellow Gold is still all time though: weird, funny AND haunting.

I love when "Hi-5" does the throwback to "Novocane" and cuts out. "Turn that shit off, man! What's wrong with you? Get the other record." The unreleased tracks on the Deluxe version are great! "Inferno" is so fun.

Also I love "Mellow Gold" as an album title. I always thought it was a joke-spooner of Jello Mold.

Yeah wiki repeats what I understood the title to be in reference to:

The final title used, Mellow Gold, was named after a potent strain of California marijuana.

I’m with baader on Odelay, sounds forced and calculated. Maybe it is the dust bros collab

what's that one thread? songs that sound like Oh Sweet Nothin

I want 10,000 albums that sound like One Foot in the Grave, the best thing Beck ever did

A lot of OTM here

Yeah I agree with a lot of these takes. Straightforward, AA-friendly mellow rock and folk is just not what I want from Beck even though he does it solidly well. Also One Foot In the Grave had a pretty significant impact on my subsequent musical taste, as it helped get me into both The Carter Family and Skip James

Mellow Gold has some of my favorite lyrics ever on it.

Acid casualty with a repossessed car
Vietnam vet playin air guitar

I decided beck started out as an excellent lyricist who just got worse over time. I sing stuff off one foot in the grave all the time. It’s all so simple and honest.

Softly you would sing
Swinging in your swing
It wasn’t night it wasn’t day

i'm so curious about sea change just bc of the cover and title! i've def heard divisive opinions

Don’t bother unless you need a soporific

The covers band I sat in with recently did Nobody's Fault But My Own, and the song kind of grew on me.

Still haven't really been grabbed by Mutations as a whole though

"oh maria" is the keeper from Mutations for me. What a great organ sound, nice drumming too.

yeah, Mutations has a lot of good chord progressions and arrangements. also, his lyrics are still cryptic enough to get by on

To this day I don't know what separates Mutations (I like) and Sea Change (I don't) -- humor?

that, and an actual pulse

Quite enjoyed Sea Change at the time, as it came out right at a time when I was feeling sorry for myself after a breakup. A lot of it is pastiche (Gainsbourg, Dylan, Nick Drake, Hank Williams) but still enjoyable. Completely tuned out after that though

Sea Change is really good

Oh Alfred I would 100% say mutations is better due to a lack of boring lyrics