Beck: Be a loser

Beck

I have come to the conclusion after listening to "Modern Times" that Beck is part of a dying breed of modern day story tellers with unparalled talent. Easily one of the godfathers of the indie music we all enjoy today, Beck has been doing his thing for a long long long time. Sure his experimentation hasn't always worked out but i suppose this is the price you pay for genius. Most of us who aren't Beck fans will vaguely remember his one radio song "Loser" released way way back in the 90s. May i take the opportunity to introduce the album "Odelay" to you. Easily one of his best albums and one of THE best albums in the past decade.

Notice i use the word albums often with Beck, as opposed to the current day cotton candy substance of 3 killers and remaining fillers. In fact, these days we actually expect to buy an album for 2-3 songs!! Beck is someone who churns out albums, not singles. He tells stories, not summaries. He weaves magic, not card tricks.

Watch this video preview of the album that does a decent job of meshing bits of different songs into a teaser clip



Beck is someone who collaborates and borrows inspiration from everyone in jazz, blues, electronica, country, folk etc etc. I remember his last album "Guerlito" and how country blues it sounded. If you get the chance to listen to that album, you MUST listen to "Black Tambourine". Arrghh. so good. Click to watch a live performance. ( check out the dancing tambourine guy haha.. screwball)




Anyway i digress again, Modern guilt helms Dangermouse as the partner in crime and what a pairing! Danger Mouse is behind Gnarls Barkley's annoying "Crazy" and also the brains behind Gorillaz. C'mon did you really think Damon Albarn could gradutae from Blur to Gorillaz all by his british lonesome? He had help. alot of help. Danger Mouse is a superbly gifted producer and he lends an astonishing sense of song writing to this album. For one, the album is so well paced that it doesn't feel like a Beck release. I'm used to 10 min orchestra pieces with weird 4 min atmospheric noise from him. In Modern Guilt, not only do the songs bounce easily to the next, they do so with minimal effort and maximim pleasure.

You really need to listen to this album to get the full flavour and by that i mean approaching it from a "How did he do that" perspective. I swear track 6 "Walls" has trash cans as percussions. It's got a simple addicitive chorus with i think organs, keyboards and apparently, thrash cans. Song 8 "Soul of a Man" engages the help of cows i believe. Somehow he re creates moo-ing that works PERFECT for the song. Cows mooing??? Genius i say, genius.

I understand Beck is not for everyone and some of y'all are happy with top 40 and that is perfectly fine. But listen, before you ate oysters, you perhaps only ate cockels. When's the last time you paid 40 bucks for cockels? Give him a go and see if he can't instantly improve your cd library's credibility. I've uploaded 4 songs into the playlist, and do as they say in Australia " You never never know if you never ever go".