Beck: Morning Phase

Beck: Morning Phase

2014

Capitol Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Cycle  2. Morning  3. Heart is a Drum  4. Say Goodbye  5. Blue Moon  6. Unforgiven  7. Wave  8. Don't Let it Go  9. Blackbird Chain  10. Phase  11. Turn Away  12. Country Down  13. Waking Light


Oh, man...I forgot I even bought this one...I should have covered this album a week or so ago but glossed right past it...My CD rack is still a little out of order since the flood last year and blah blah blah I'm too lazy to put them back in order...

This was released after a six year wait, during which I figured we might have heard the last of Beck...I figured he had bowed out of the whole album every two years cycle to focus on writing sheet music, doing digital only cover albums, etc...Which I don't begrudge him...You don't always feel like making an album...I get it...

But the announcement last year of a new Beck album last year was surprising news and when I heard it was gentler, acoustic stuff I immediately thought, "Hmmm, like 'Sea Change?"...Then I saw the album cover and exclaimed, "EXACTLY like 'Sea Change!"

  Hey, I really like "Sea Change' so if he wants to revisit that muse, that's alright with me...And it does sound a lot like "Sea Change"... Mellow and reflective with sparse yet lush production...Slow Drumbeats, languidly strummed acoustic guitars and hazy string arrangements...I'd say where it differs is the actual emotional content..."Sea Change" had a very specific emotional hurt whereas "Morning Phase" just has a general malaise surrounding it...."Sea Change" has always sounded great when you're in a gloomy mood, but  the mood of "Morning Phase" is much harder to define, allowing you to somewhat project your own mood onto it...I've heard of the album described as "sad," but to my ears, I interpret it as a "silver lining" type of thing...There's still some darkness on tracks like "Wave" but then "Don't Let it Go" comes on and I instantly feel a little better...In fact, the final moments of album closer "Waking Light,' with its woo-ooo-ooo's and gospel grandeur read as downright uplifting to me...I guess "Morning Phase" could be viewed as a more "adult" album in that sense...There's not the pretense of "Yes, cocoon yourself in my infinite darkness"...It's sounds more conflicted... A jumble of many moods at once, which I tend to equate with the prevailing emotional state of adulthood...

And the whole thing sounds great...Play it on some nice headphones or big speakers and the warm ambiance will suck you right in...Like a big thick comforter for the ears...That said, a lot of the songs don't stick with you like the ones on "Sea Change" did..."The Golden Age"? "Paper Tigers"? "Little One"? "Guess I'm Doing Fine"? I swear to you those were etched into my brain immediately, on the other hand after listening to "Morning Phase" again I was like, "Oh yea...This song! Oh, yea...This song!" Take from that what you will... Is immediacy a prerequisite for great art? No, not at all...I actually kind of admire how elusive and amorphous this is...It will probably never draw the immediate emotional response that a replay of "Sea Change" does for me...But  I bet it's going to continue to sound new and interesting on ...When you really think about it, Beck is really the...Awww, man...Here comes Kanye West...

"Beyonce'! Beyonce'! Beyonce'! Nobody respects a true artist like Beyonce' (and not the army of producers and song writers who record all the music and write all the songs for her album)!"

 (channels his talentlessness into an autotune program that processes him to sound exactly like T-Pain, thereby creating the illusion of talent to folks who have never listened to anything more challenging than Lady Gaga..) Bleeeooo-bloooorp-bleeeeep!!! (translation: "Look like a fat booty Celine Dion! Sex is on fire! I’m the King of Leona Lewis!"  (somehow writes this garbage and still has the nerve to consider himself a genius (Devil's Advocate: "But wait! Isn't it a type of genius to suck and still have the nerve to call yourself a genius?" Naw, it's still just nerve...Misplaced nerve...))).

Ahhh, shit...It was actually kinda classy of him to apologize...Maybe I misjudged him...Maybe I ought to apology to Kanye now:

I Would like to publicly apologize to Kanye, I'm sorry Kanye...

...I'm sorry that you suck!!

I'd like to apologize to The word "suck" for comparing it to Kanye West...I'm sorry suck....

Wait! What am I doing sitting around apologizing for? It's Friday night! Saturday morning is when I normally do my apologizing! Let's crack a beer and listen to some music...

(Note: Some people may see this Gold and White beer as Black and Blue...)

...Here's  "Don't Let it Go" by

Beck: Modern Guilt

 Beck: Modern Guilt

2008

DGC Records

Format I Own it On: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Orphans  2. Gamma Ray  3. Chemtrails  4. Modern Guilt  5. Youthless  6. Walls  7. Replica  8. Soul of a Man  9. Profanity Prayers  10. Volcano


Beck's 2008 collaboration with famed producer Dangermouse...



This album sports a bleak, paranoid 21st century feel...The track listing and running time is lean compared to his last couple of albums  (10 songs in 33 minutes) and Beck ditches the rapping completely. Instead he spends the album crooning over a bone-dry backing of clattering percussion and sparse bass grooves...

 

This is probably my least favorite of Beck's albums, but his output has been pretty consistent, so that's not saying much...It actually has a killer side one... Everything in the first half works like crazy; "Gamma Ray" is one of his coolest tracks, and he actually pulls off "ominous" thanks to the song's creepy spy riff and glitched-out vocals...Come to think of it "Chemtrails" is kind of spooky too...I'm not sure what Beck is singing about, some sort of conspiracy theory apparently, but it's a beautiful, disorienting slice of woozy psychedelia... 

 But as I find myself deep into the second half of this record I can feel my attention wander from time to time...which marks the first time I've ever dazed out while listening to a Beck record...Usually his records are so jam-packed with interesting ideas and melodies that it takes a couple listens just to take it all in...Luckily, the catchy Velvet Underground stomp of "Profanity Prayers" is there to liven things up...

This album is Beck's last record to date, but there's been recent news that he'll be releasing an acoustic album soon, and as always, I'll be the first in line at the record store to check it out....Who would have thought that Beck would end up being one of the most important and influential musicians to come out of the '90's...I can recall hearing "Loser" for the first time back in 1994, and absolutely hating it...It seemed like some sort of novelty tune aimed at the "slacker" set... But people would always tell me, "Man, forget 'Loser', You've got to check out the rest of the album..." But I continued to avoid "Mellow Gold" like the plague...

Then I remember hanging out at one of Scott's legendary bonfires and someone put on the "Mellow Gold" cassette...I was skeptical at first, but as I listened on, there was no denying I was dead-ass wrong...It was an incredible album and the guy really was a true talent...And he's proven time and time again that it wasn't a fluke...With that said, let's check out "Profanity Prayers" by Beck...Enjoy...

 

Beck: The Information

Beck: The Information

2006

Interscope Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Elevator Music  2.Think I'm in Love  3. Cellphone's Dead  4. Strange Apparition  5. Soldier Jane  6. Nausea  7.  New Round  8. Dark Star  9. We Dance Alone  10. No Complaints  11. 1000 BPM  12. Motorcade  13. The Information 14. Movie Theme  15. The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton

Oddly enough, I almost forgot this album existed...I finished listening to "Guero" yesterday and today when I went to the CD rack to pick out what I thought was "Modern Guilt," I inspected the cover and thought to myself, "Wait...What is this?!" I took a quick glance at the back cover and the song titles "Think I'm In Love" and "Nausea" jumped right out at me...However if you would have asked me a week ago which album those songs appeared on I probably would have said "Guero." How did I forget about this album?



Well, after listening to it again, I can kind of understand why...It's oddly underwhelming at first...Yet on closer inspection, it's one of his most listenable albums...Beck sounds utterly lost on it, numbly rapping about cellphones and digital food malls over intricate grooves that exist somewhere between early 80's funk and krautrock...

The only notable departure from this bleepity sound-scape is "Strange Apparition" which is a dead-ringer for Mick Taylor-era Rolling Stones...Other than that the entire  album has this uniformly dazed sound. however, some good hooks do emerge, like the cool pop song "Think I'm In Love" and that "We're all pushing up the tincan mountaintop..." chorus on "Motorcade" is pretty hard to shake...



The album ends with a three-song suite that sums up the experience of the album perfectly; disjointed, slightly overlong and satisfyingly funky...Two guys talk in dispassionate circles about what the ultimate record would sound like...

"Like, depending, like change depending on what mood you're in. Like the best...or depending on like when you assume from a different age, they'll mean something different"

"I don't like it when they change. It frightens me..."

 Very 2006...Remember, the world was a confusing place back in 2006...

We found out Pluto wasn't even a planet!

We also discovered Lonelygirl15 wasn't real...I bet those aren't even real scissors...I bet they're pinking shears!



Hell, even "A Million Little Pieces" was fake...Man, I wish my hand was covered with candy sprinkles...My hand has more of a salty crust...




The cover of "The Information" is pretty bland when you first buy it,...It sort of looks like boring old graph paper...But it comes with this cool sheet of stickers that you can create your own customer cover for it...

This is what I did with mine...

(front)

(back)

It also comes with a sweet dvd (that a lot of people seem to dislike) where Beck makes no-budget videos for every song on the album utilizing cheap wigs, godawful video effects and funny costumes...It never fails to crack me up...

 So let's check out one of those videos...Here's "Think I'm In Love" by Beck...

Beck: Guero

Beck: Guero

2005

Interscope Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. E-Pro  2. Qué Onda Guero  3. Girl  4. Missing  5. Black Tambourine  6. Earthquake Weather  7. Hell Yes  8. Broken Drum  9. Scarecrow  10. Go It Alone  11. Farewell Ride  12. Rental Car  13. Emergency Exit

This record was actually surprising at the time because it was so unsurprising...Prior to this album, you never knew quite what you were getting when you picked up the new Beck album...Would it be retro-funk like "Midnite Vultures"?  A suite of sad acoustic songs like "Sea Change"?   Or another pop culture junkyard in the sample-heavy mold of "Odelay"?  It turns out the answer was "yes."

Beck reunites with the Dust Brothers (whom he had previously worked with on "Odelay") and produces a record that feels a lot like a retrospective of Beck's career up to this point...In most cases you can break this record down track by track and decide which Beck album it should be on....("Missing" should be on "Mutations." "Que Onda Guero" could have been on "Odelay." "Hell Yes" would have fit nicely on "Midnite Vultures" and so on...) but that's diminishing the album's achievement...

After "Sea Change" it would have felt a little weird to "get crazy with the cheez-whiz"  again, so Beck mellows his go-to wackiness a bit and gives us the mature version of his previous styles...It feels more rooted in the real world than before...

"I push I pull, 
 the days go slow. 
 into a void we filled with death and noise..."

Those lyrics won't exactly liven up your next party, but for some reason they sound just fine next to   "Hell Yes!''s feel-good robotic funk...Why? Because  "Hell Yes!" is played more straight than "Get Real Paid,"  for example...



And the final track "Emergency Exit" is probably my favorite Beck song, period. 

"Now hold your hand onto the plow
Work your body till the sun goes down
What's left of death is more than fear
Let dust be dust and the good lord near..." 

You can practically see Beck wiping the sweat from his brow as a plows a field somewhere...Dusty gospel-folk meets high tech electronica...

 

It kind of felt that ever since "Odelay" Beck has been avoiding making a proper follow up to that album, and it kind of worked...He excelled in genres and moods that seemed unlikely when he first came onto the scence in the 90's...But it feels like he's really facing his legacy head-on here, imbues it with everything he's learned since and ties it all together with a great big bow...And we got the super poppy "Girl" out of it too, so everybody wins....

This album was later released in a remixed version called "Guerolito"...

 
I've never heard it...I think I've mentioned before I'm not much of a fan of remix albums...I remember owning the cassette of "Mixed Up" by the Cure but that's the only one I can think of offhand....



For some reason the thought of just taking completed songs and adding a phat beat to them and re-releasing them makes me vaguely ill...Not that I'm saying "Guerolito" should be put in that category...I've never heard it, and I'm sure Beck put a lot more thought and care into it than say, "J to tha L-O! The Remixes."





Y'know...I don't really feel like talking about Beck and remixes today...I'm just going to post a few more random photos from an old photo album I found...

 

Here's Rotgut doing a badass leap off a trampoline whist rocking out...A lot of bands like to rock out in their parent's garages, but we would do it while a car was actively being worked on...We felt it gave the albums a properly greasy aura...

 

"Ho! Ho! Ho!"

At one point we were using this photo for an album cover but we ended up not doing it, as I don't think the subject of the photo was too thrilled about it...But I love this picture so much! The flaming speaker brings an inner peace to me that no words can properly convey...

Here's a picture of a scowling Josh Sam, Jason( lurking in the shadows) and that's me in the front with a gasmask, looking like I should be on "Breaking Bad" or something...

Okay, enough photos for today, if anyone seriously objects to any of the above pictures, just let me know and I'll take them down...Except for that flaming speaker photo...That one is non-negotiable...

Alright, let's check out "Emergency Exit" by Beck...

Beck: MIdnite Vultures

Beck: Midnite Vultures

1999

DGC Reocrds

Format I Own it On: Compact Disc

Track Listing:  1. Sexx Laws  2. Nicotine & Gravy  3. Mixed Bizness  4. Get Real Paid  5. Hollywood Freaks  6. Peaches & Cream  7. Broken Train  8. Milk & Honey  9. Beautiful Way  10. Pressure Zone  11. Debra


I think everybody needs to check out this record again...It seems to be remembered now as a failure...A misstep on the way to "Sea Change." But I don't see it....It was 1999, the world was about to end, so Beck does a 180 from the somber, serious "Mutations" and  invites us into a late night world of sleazy hot tubs, flashy champagne bottles and automatic bzooty...



A proper party album built on the solid musical foundation of Prince-style sex jams and the rubbery funk of George Clinton,  and he tosses in plenty of Kraftwerk and blues to keep things interesting...Really only crossing the line into out-and-out parody on the ironic luxury rap of "Hollywood Freaks."

A lot of highlights here: This record starts the party right with "Sexx Laws" where R&B brass meets bluegrass banjo and the neon headrush of "Mixed Bizzness" which is just a whirlwind of all things funky...

The record seems to shift gears a bit in its second half...The gonzo sexuality and  robot-funk is set aside for a moment and the run of songs from the bluesy "Broken Train" to the country ballad :"Beautiful Way" could fit comfortably on "Odelay."

 The album closes with the glorious slow-jam "Debra" which would be right at home on side two of "Purple Rain."  Lover-man R&B where Beck woos some girl named Jenny ("Debra" is apparently her sister) with lines like:

"Lady, step inside my Hyundai,
 I'm gonna take you up to Glendale..."

 (This song always reminds me of hanging out at the Bambi Bar in Tucson, where this song always seemed to be playing on the jukebox...I miss the Bambi Bar...)

I hear up and coming bands doing music like this all the time and garnering tons of critical acclaim...This album actually seems to foretell "of Montreal" style indie-dance and the later Electroclash genre... But people didn't really seem to want this from Beck at the time..."Sea Change" got the acclaim but to be totally honest, I probably find this album more interesting and enjoyable...I couldn't stop playing it that winter of '99, and I'm finding it hard to take it out of my CD player as we speak...

Oh, yea, BTW...I just discovered today that my copy of "Sea Change" is too scratched up to play, so I'll be skipping that album in the meantime, but I'll get back to it later..





I was thinking of doing a "catch-up" week, where I cover albums starting with A-B that I've picked up since the blog started (some Angry Samoans and Alkaline Trio albums I've picked up recently...I also went through an archeological dig through my closet  that unearthed a few Anthrax CD's...)...Maybe I'll do that next week...Sounds kinda fun..

But to finish out our celebration of 1999's "Midnite Vultures" I dug through my comic box and scanned in some old ads from that year...

Ohhh yea...After achieving the record for highest RBI-per-hit tally in baseball history., Mark McGwire was a big deal in 1999, ...His face was everywhere that year; on Magazine covers, television ads, boxes of Wheaties...He even snagged an endorsement for...bedwetting? Alright...I'll go with it...I never used to understand bedwetting until a few years ago when one night I had a dream (I know...Hearing about other people's dreams is always mind-numbingly boring, but you might want to listen to this one, since it's a kind of cautionary tale...) where I had to take a piss real bad...In my dream I searched frantically for a restroom, and finally found one...But when I opened the door I was surprised to find that the urinal wasn' mounted on teh wall like one would normally expect...No, this urinal was horizontal on the floor...It looked kind of like this...

So anyway, I struggled with the logistics of how to piss in a urinal that was on the floor, until finally I came up with the brilliant solution, "I know! I'll just lie on my stomach and pee!" So I lied on the floor in what I can only describe as the position you get into when you start to do a push-up and said to myself,"Alright! Here I go!"

 Man, what a dirty trick for my mind to play on me!  Thankfully my body was kind enough to alert me to wake up in the nick of time! But it hit me at that moment, "Wow! That's how someone can piss a bed!"

I kind of wish it was Christmas now...Mainly, so I can eat Christmas-flavored Fruity Pebbles and  drink hot buttered rum with my 1999 Christmas Furby...

                                                     

                                                            "Kah boo koo doh!"

 

Woah! That old crappy CGI morphing effect was so popular in the 90's it even had its own book series, which was later turned into a television series!

Kind of like a 90's version of "Manimal."

Okay, I think we've all had just about enough 1999...Let's bust out "Mixed Bizness" by Beck...Enjoy...

Beck: Mutations

Beck:Mutations

1998

Geffen Records

Format I Own it On: Compact Disc

Track Listing:  1. Cold Brains  2. Nobody's Fault But My Own  3. Lazy Flies  4. Canceled Check  5. We Live Again  6. Tropicalia  7. Dead Melodies  8. Bottle of Blues  9. O Maria  10. Sing It Again  11. Static  12. Diamond Bollocks

It was excellent getting to listen to all the Beatles albums in a row, but now I'm moving onto Beck's 1998 album "Mutations." A rich varied, psychedelic record that's not entirely unlike...well...The Beatles...

Hot on the heels of the surprise success of "Mellow Gold" and the monster record "Odelay", (both of which I apparently don't own for some reason...) this record was released with little fanfare...But I think that strategy probably helped it, since it's not really a "big hit" kind of record....It's more quiet and experimental than that, there's no wacky hip hop,  or samples, but simply a downcast blend of baroque pop, bossa nova, and country-blues; the only time we get straight-up rock is on the hidden track "Diamond Bollocks."

Remember it was the 90's...Hidden tracks were mandatory. What the hell started this 90's craze? The earliest example of a secret song, I can find,  is "Her Majesty" on the Beatles "Abbey Road"....But, thinking back, I think the whole "Hidden track after X minutes of silence" technique might have started with "Endless, Nameless" on Nirvana's "Nevermind." That was a pretty big deal at the time...I can clearly recall listening to the radio one morning and hearing an announcement on the radio that an extra song had been found on "Nevermind." That was like the Moon Landing of my generation...



Soon the hidden track was everywhere, and then bands started to get even more and more wacky and over-the-top with the idea...Culminating in the infamous "pre-gap" hidden track, where you have to hit the rewind button as soon as you put the CD to hear a super-hidden song...Off the top of my head I remember hearing pregap hidden tracks on Less Than Jake's "Losing Streak" and 311's "Transistor." Who knows...maybe there's  a hidden track at the end of this blog entry...See if you can find it (I bet you can!) .



Wait, I forgot what I was talking about...

Oh yea..."Mutation" by Beck...Anyway, it's a subtle and complex album that took a few listens to sink in for me, but now I'm confident in saying this is his best album....I can remember people who were suddenly surprised at the tenderness of "Sea Change" but when I heard it I kind of shrugged my shoulders because I had already heard him do it better on "Nobody's Fault But My Own."The only difference really, is that the lyrics on "Sea Change" are a bit more straightforward. Beck still uses his  scrambled lyrical style here, and it's quite effective....On the previous albums his lyrics came across as a particularly fun game of slacker mad-libs, and although he uses the same style here,  he's successfully adjusted the tone...

"The trawlers drift by
they're chewing dried meat,
House of disrepute,
the dust of opiates
and syphilis patients
on brochure vacations..."

...and as a result they take on the character of a half-remembered nightmare...

Here are some other half-remembered nightmares from 1998:

  Patch Adams...

Swing Revival (Here's a fun game...Can anyone name a single good band with a stand-up bass since 1959? I understand the answer to this riddle is 100% subjective, but  nonetheless, your answer is wrong...)



Savage Garden


Sorry to trudge up memories best left suppressed, but I think if we work through it we can eventually overcome 1998 together...here's some happy memories from 1998....

 The 1998 Red Wings



In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Pikachu!

Okay...I'm feeling better now...Let's check out "Static" by Beck...

                                                   (Sit in silence for 10 minutes...)












 Alright here it is..."Diamond Bollocks" by Beck...(Pretend to be real startled when it comes on!)