Beck - Guero

[DudeAsInCool]

Beck's Back with New Album 'Guero'

Fri Mar 18, 9:13 PM ET

 Entertainment - Reuters

By Melinda Newman

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Heralded as the voice of a disenfranchised generation ever since the 1994 release of signature song "Loser," Beck just laughs when asked if he feels pressure to live up to such an impossible standard.

..The album reunites Beck with the Dust Brothers, who produced his best-selling CD to date, the 1996 release "Odelay." The title has sold 2.2 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Propelled by a sing-along chorus and funky beat (as well as a sample of the Beastie Boys' "So What'cha Want"), first single "E-Pro" is off to Beck's strongest start on radio in years.

Read more here:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/n...m/music_beck_dc

[KiwiCoromandel]

BECK : Guero

March 19, 2005

Guero (Universal)

A decade ago, Beck Hansen was the cutting edge. Folk, hip-hop and the inversions of electronic dance music had coalesced in his skinny frame.

After some strong rumblings in the underground, his above-ground release, Mellow Gold, put those elements in front of the rest of us. Then the ideas-rich Odelay made it work as art and commerce.

The tabloid image may have been that of diffident observer doing the minimum, but he was anything but, as the Brazilian-influenced Mutations, the arch but hugely entertaining funk of Midnite Vultures and the intensely personal, downbeat Sea Change subsequently proved.

Guero has been presaged as a return to that Beck of a decade ago, much being made of the return of Odelay producers the Dust Brothers, and both a professed renewed interest in hip-hop's cut-and-paste aesthetic and the countervailing strong use of guitar.

And all that is true enough. There's a lot of Mellow Gold/Odelay's cross-currents of rhythm here, with regular displacement of emphasis due to sometimes unsettling sounds or sudden shifts. Que Onda Guero throws back to Devil's Haircut with some nasty guitar and slap-happy beats, and in Earthquake Weather there's a mellow melody and relaxed rhythm, but the vocal has some foreboding and the building of sounds paints a darker picture by song's end.

Later, in Broken Drum, while there's some familiar naked slide guitar, it butts heads with what the dark T-shirt metalheads might refer to as oppressive, storm-bringer noises.

But then Broken Drum also contains one of the key differences between Guero and Mellow Gold and Odelay - the more personal feel Beck brings to his stories and his tone. He's not just striving for effect any more.

It's a reflection of how this album is not so much a look back as the accumulation of another decade's worth of living. The bouncy, almost bubblegum dance of Girl couldn't have happened this way without Midnite Vultures, just as the scratchy Scarecrow, which most closely resembles his rougher-edged early work, shows the effects of Sea Change's acoustic excursions.

What Guero doesn't have is any real stop-you-in-your-tracks moments. But it is a mature, still challenging and still entertaining album.

[method77]

I will get this as soon as I have the time

I love Beck

[Potato]

mmmm... beck... yum

[DudeAsInCool]

Here's an amusing review from Pitchfork:

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-revie...eck/guero.shtml

[DudeAsInCool]

Thomas Bartlett gives a positive review in his Audiofile column at Salon.com:

http://www.salon.com/ent/audiofile/index.html

[Potato]

I still want him.