Beck
Guero
»
Beck
Guero
Geffen, 2005
RiYL: Beastie Boys, Moby, Eels |
Beck Hansen's eighth album, Guero, doesn't have any songs. Oh, the CD has tracks, 13 of them, and its tracks have distinct beginnings and endings. Some of them are even structured like rock songs, with verses, choruses, and bridges. And, yes, there's a band, and Beck sings, and at least one of Guero's three-minute musical segments is being played on the radio right now, wedged between things that should be called songs without a second thought.
Nor am I suggesting the record is a pretentious, beat-heavy symphony that should only be listened to start to finish. In fact, that's the rub: you could listen to any four-minute slice of Guero, even if that slice contains the fade out at the end of a track and the fade in to the next one, and groove to it just as happily as if you'd decided to play the opening cut or the hit single. Songs start and songs stop. Guero just swings smoothly along, immediately familiar and immediately likable.
It's thematically consistent, full of moderately abstract lyrics about fate and setting suns and maybe death and black tambourines, too -- and, well, I have no idea what it's about. I can say with greater certainty, though, that Guero is sonically consistent. It's all hushed vocals, hand claps, and exposed basslines, punctuated every 10 minutes or so by a lighthearted (ironically so, I'm sure) keyboard fugue or na-na-na chorus.
It's fun, and it's good. Guero is Beck's slipperiest album, hard to concentrate on and to subdivide into memorable chunks -- no songs, remember -- but chock full of arresting sounds and beats. It just might make for the coolest background music in recent memory.
Guero sounds too much like 1996's Odelay, also a collaboration with the Dust Brothers, to count as a breakthrough, but as a piece of music, it still stands on its own. If Odelay's dubbed-out folk-funk weirdness hid a little hard rock on its edges, Guero leans towards acoustic blues. Perhaps this is Odelay for a Beck in his 30s, a Beck who's been through a sea change and has stopped trying to be quite so funny all the time.
The album's name means "white boy," inspired by catcalls Beck once endured on walks to and from his apartment in L.A. But he can thank his heckling teenaged Latino muses for more than just the album title and some Spanglish lyrics on "Que Onda Guero," though. Latin beats show up in several places, flavoring both hip-hop party moments and bossa-nova intros and outros.
There's no shortage of white-boy hip-hop here, either. On "E-Pro," Beck's hushed slacker voice rides over the beat from the Beasties' "So Watcha Want," while "Que Onda Guero" borrows its stoned hooks from Cypress Hill, those forgotten giants of '90s marijuana rap. Both tracks will be plenty suitable for your next house party.
"Girl" is the weirdest part of Guero. It starts off with a mercifully short paean to early video-game music before evolving into something more listenable. At first glance, it's merely a cheery remembrance of summertime hook-ups, but Beck serves notice that he isn't any old straightforward composer, diverting the melody down the minor scale to the chorus before throwing in a spastic acoustic guitar solo.
On "Missing," Beck's lyrics recall 2002's folky document of devastation, Sea Change. As with that record, there's a woman here disrupting Beck's equilibrium, and he responds with some weighty imagery. "Walking along with my boots full of rocks / Can't believe these tears of mine / I give 'em to you to keep away in a box." Musically, however, it's still a funky and beat-driven piece. "Broken Drum," on the other hand -- the exception that proves Guero's no-song rule -- actually sounds like a leftover from the Sea Change sessions. It's a ballad that intersects the noise and banging around it with muffled atmospheric tones and a set of pounding power chords over the chorus.
Guero still has enough weirdness to go around. "Hell Yes" boasts a guest vocal spot from humanity's future robot overlords, and "Rental Car" is a timeless work of amphetamine choral funk, with an emphasis on Avis and death. "Straight as a razor, kicking up dust," it announces, "Digging through ditches and falling to rust / Taking me far, far as a rental car can go."
The final track, "Emergency Exit," is far more characteristic of the rest of the album. It shuffles and slides forward on the strength of its acoustic samples and Beck's familiar voice, slipping into and out of your consciousness long before your consciousness is done slipping around on it.
JEFF GRAY | Jeff Gray used to be an important mover and shaker in Chicago, but gave all that up to live on a beach in rural Hawaii. You'll notice him if you're there, he's the one who's very tall and a little bit sunburned. His musical tastes tend towards the mainstream -- Phish, Radiohead, The Strokes -- but he'll argue to the death that those bands are mainstream because they're 100% awesome. Jeff's always on the lookout for the next great pop song, tidbits about Michigan football, and 80's action movies on cable.