Beck
Guero
»
Beck
Guero
Geffen, 2005
RiYL: Beastie Boys, T. Rex, John Lennon |
Guero is Beck's apology to his more casual fans who may not have followed him through Mutations, Midnite Vultures, and Sea Change. It's a craven plea to get songs on the radio again, and damn it if it hasn't already worked ("E-Pro" is all over modern rock stations). Were you clamoring for a true follow-up to Odelay? Well, be careful what you wish for, because here it is.
Guero works, but at a price. If your initial inclination is to like it, you'll probably like it. If you want to hate it, you'll probably end up liking it, but feeling bad about it. As soporific as Sea Change grew, it seemed as if Beck was genuinely interested in the music he was making, which is no small adjustment for the man who once put the od(d) in postmodern (a classic "Simpsons" exchange could apply; "Are you being ironic?" "Man, I don't even know anymore").
The album smacks of cynical detachment; it seems more interesting to the listener than the musician. Lazily, Beck only uses his crack band on a few tracks here, and the loss, while successfully recalling the mad-scientist vibe of Odelay, is not a musical progression in any sense of the word.
The songs are not bad. "E-Pro," which samples "So What'cha Want" and is highlighted by a spectacularly successful, calculated attempt to get a chorus into your head, is as effective a first track as "Devil's Haircut," which it kind of resembles.
"Girl" is a nifty effort at mixing Beck's way-back One Foot In The Grave-style folk with Dust Brothers beats. "Scarecrow" brings the funk and one of the few interesting lyrics on the album. "Farewell Ride" sounds like a song sung to the stop-motion coffin in the "Loser" video.
Elsewhere, "Hell Yes" unnecessarily revisits the Midnite Vultures discotheque. "QuéeOnda Guero" perhaps overloads on expected Beck devices (sampled Spanish babbling, weird synth patches, deliberately bad rapping) for a too-paint-by-numbers effort that leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth.
There are a handful of tracks ("Missing," "Broken Drum") that halfway try to approach the emoting of Sea Change, but they seem out of place. Odelay had emotional moments, recall, but ones that were entirely inferred from the music. The lyrics stayed opaque. As Beck has grown into expressing his feelings more directly, he's somewhat lost the knack for writing tunes to sustain them.
He hasn't lost his ear for a hook, however. Ultimately, Guero is worth listening to, as flawed as it may be, because even Beck on autopilot is still catchy, daffy, and frequently really interesting. I kind of hope it yields more hit singles, because if the pattern holds, that would free Beck to make two or three more really weird albums.
Editor's Note: For a second take on this album, read Jeff Gray's review of this album here.
MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.