favorite beck album? (official beck thread)

Started by Rudie Obias, January 22, 2004, 10:33:53 PM

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Pozer

no on the NIN.  would like to, but ive been spending too much on concerts and things lately.. Radiohead, Beck,  Coldplay (gfriend)

plus i bought 8 tickets for this:



cuz i wanted a big group for it. 

well, ill be in crappy T1 for Sunday night Radiohead and glorious G1 for Beck.  surprisingly i look just like the dude in my avatar.     

MacGuffin

Quote from: Pozer on July 03, 2008, 12:48:50 PMwell, ill be in crappy T1 for Sunday night Radiohead and glorious G1 for Beck.  surprisingly i look just like the dude in my avatar. 

L1 Sun. & L2 Mon. for Radiohead. R2 for Beck/Spoon.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

tpfkabi

this thread brought this song to mind. i love the lyrics (i love Mutations in general, too);

We Live Again

These withered hands have dug for a dream
Sifted through sand and leftover nightmares
Over the hill, a desolate wind
Turns shit to gold and blows my soul crazy

The end, oh, the end
We live again
Oh, I grow weary of the end

Oh, hungry days in the footsteps of fools
Gazing alone through sex-painted windows
Dredging the night, drunk libertines
Stink like colognes from a new-fangled wasteland

The end, oh, the end
We live again
Oh, I grow weary of the end

Love is a plague in a mix-match parade
Where the castaways look so deranged
When will children learn to let their wildernesses burn
And love will be new, never cold and vacant

These withered hands have dug for a dream
Sifted through sand and leftover nightmares

The end, oh, the end
We live again
Oh, I grow weary of the end
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

Pozer

Quote from: MacGuffin on July 03, 2008, 02:53:48 PM
Quote from: Pozer on July 03, 2008, 12:48:50 PMwell, ill be in crappy T1 for Sunday night Radiohead and glorious G1 for Beck.  surprisingly i look just like the dude in my avatar. 

L1 Sun. & L2 Mon. for Radiohead. R2 for Beck/Spoon.

damn your Radioheads.  and both nights.  i'd GIVE AWAY the Becks to sit that much closer.   

MacGuffin

Quote from: Pozer on July 03, 2008, 03:37:13 PM
Quote from: MacGuffin on July 03, 2008, 02:53:48 PM
Quote from: Pozer on July 03, 2008, 12:48:50 PMwell, ill be in crappy T1 for Sunday night Radiohead and glorious G1 for Beck.  surprisingly i look just like the dude in my avatar. 

L1 Sun. & L2 Mon. for Radiohead. R2 for Beck/Spoon.

damn your Radioheads.  and both nights.  i'd GIVE AWAY the Becks to sit that much closer.   

Yeah, when they went on sale, I went for Sun. and had my brother purchase Mon. for me.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

cinemanarchist

I just hate you both for getting to go to shows at The Hollywood Bowl. I was lucky enough to see Air with a full symphony there a couple years ago and I really wish I saw all of my concerts there.
My assholeness knows no bounds.

Pozer

should probly move this to the Radiohead thread (or re-title it, Beck - he's good, but not Radiohead good or something). 

Anyways, i love the HBowl but was actually hoping Radiohead would be at the Greek.  ive seen em once at the Greek and once at the Bowl and Greek was superior even tho Bowl seats were a little bit better.

Quote from: MacGuffin on July 03, 2008, 04:28:03 PM
Yeah, when they went on sale, I went for Sun. and had my brother purchase Mon. for me.

smart move.  i was on a trip, so had a friend go for em.  did you go for two or four?  we went four, always tougher to get good seats.  cinnar is right tho...it's gonna be amazing no matter where you're seated at HB.  lucky enough to not be on a lawn and to be seein em period. i still fear Mac sayin night two was way better.   

Jeremy Blackman

I actually didn't like this at first, mostly cause I wasn't in the mood, I think.

Then I remembered it was a Beck record, and I started to pick up the hooks, actually hear the lyrics (which are spectacular), and notice the subtleties in the production. I love it.

Favorites are Volcano, Orphans, Gamma Ray, Chemtrails.

cron

what do you guys mean when you say this album has a great production? can you give  concise  examples on certain tracks or moments where the production is something else? there's a couple of expressions i never dare to use when making observations about music because i don't even know what they mean. another example is 'arrangements'.
context, context, context.

tpfkabi

Chemtrails really sounds similar - the beginning/slow verses to one of the Mutation b-sides.
This review is pretty close to how I feel about the record at this point in time:

http://www.austin360.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/music/entries/2008/07/07/cd_review_becks_guilt_found_mo.html

Beck
'Modern Guilt'
(Interscope)
3 stars

About 10 years ago, Beck seemed to be the voice of the past, present and future all at once, the voice of a generation that couldn't be bothered to have one.

Today? Not so much.

Back then, Beck was our most winning loser, the sleepy-eyed Los Angeles man-child who could make the most ironic musical gestures sound frank (or at least confuse the two to the point where we didn't care). Whose muse, fearing no genre or form, seemed to go anywhere. Who made it seem like music that could go anywhere was the only music that mattered.

These days, Beck sounds sluggish where he once sounded vibrant, subdued where he once sounded energized. He enlisted producer du jour Danger Mouse (Gnarls Barkley and a bunch more) to helm "Modern Guilt," but Danger seems like more of an enabler, letting Beck mosey around even when the beat picks up. The album clocks in at a mere 33 minutes (and consider a point added for that), but it drags anyway. "I'm tired of people who just want to be pleased," he sings on "Volcano," but it comes off sounding more like "I'm tired of people," which is not a good sign for a guy who once sounded energized by everything around him.

He even gets a little snippy with us. "Walls" chastises his fellow Americans: "You treat distraction like it's a religion," he sings. From whom do you think we learned that trick, buddy?

Much of "Modern Guilt" goes for a watery psychedelia but ends up soggy. "Gamma Ray" evokes loosey-goosey garage pop but ends up loggy. "Chemtrails" looks at the L.A. sky's pollution-tipped beauty but just seems smoggy. There's a haze here he just can't shake.

See, around 2000, he and his girlfriend, designer Leigh Limon, split up; nothing has been quite the same since. His 2002 album, "Sea Change," is one of the decade's most emotionally exhausting break-up records, an almost-comatose lament that's perfect by which to Google old flames. He got religion, got married within his childhood faith (he and his wife, actress Marissa Ribisi, are second-generation Scientologists) and had a couple of kids. He even made a few more records, "Guero" in '05 and "The Information" in '06. They were OK. Good, actually. Well, "Guero" was, wasn't it? It seems forever ago, but it wasn't even four years ago.

Maybe it's because the old stuff still sounds more alive, not tired of people but engaged by them.

In short, he became an adult. And "Modern Guilt" aims for an adult depth of feeling, but being an adult doesn't mean giving up on the world. If anything, it should make you redouble your efforts to make it what you want it to be.

Which makes you wonder: Does the guilt come from no longer sounding modern?
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

cron

context, context, context.

Alexandro

Well, I dont want Beck to make the most ironic musical gestures sound frank, i want him to be frank. I want him to grow past a phase that was going on in 1999 and find new ways to mix his worldview with his art.

I'm sorry, but the bottom line of every negative review I read about Beck boils down to the fact that he's not than fun anymore, in that crazy Odelay way. He ain't. It's over, let's move on.

john

Quote from: cron on July 15, 2008, 09:39:51 PM
what do you guys mean when you say this album has a great production? can you give  concise  examples on certain tracks or moments where the production is something else? there's a couple of expressions i never dare to use when making observations about music because i don't even know what they mean. another example is 'arrangements'.

For starters, it's a lot less bloated than Guero or The Information were, less layered. And, I don't think that there is less going on at once, it's just that what is happening is more seamless. Look at the first track, if you isolate everything on it, there's a lot of shit going on... but it doesn't feel like it on casual listen.

A lot of times, too it's the simple stuff that catches me... that pristine surf guitar opening to Gamma Ray, and the way it continues over the fading voices.

Danger Mouse seems to kinda reign in what previous producers have tried to exploit - the idea that everything Beck does should be a sonic tapestry. Aside from a few nice moments and commendable experiments, the last two albums. Instantly the drums are much more pronounced than I've heard in a while. The sampling seems much more seamless.

I would like to get it on vinyl, thought. As much as I admire the production - it sounds really compressed on CD. And, relatively speaking, I'm not too much of an audiophile to usually make that claim.

I dig this album. A lot.


Maybe every day is Saturday morning.

tpfkabi

Quote from: Alexandro on July 15, 2008, 11:28:35 PM
I'm sorry, but the bottom line of every negative review I read about Beck boils down to the fact that he's not than fun anymore, in that crazy Odelay way. He ain't. It's over, let's move on.

My favorite Beck record is Mutations.
Something about Modern Guilt is so sterile.
None of the 'highs' of MG touch any of his other records for me.
It's as if he's on cruise control.

Maybe I'll warm up to it. Revisiting The Information recently, I've started to open up to it some more. I think there really is a great record amongst it's bloated frame if one can dig it out. I've been watching the DVD* recently and I have a new appreciation for the last two 'real' songs (the title track and Movie Theme).

To clarify, I don't even think Modern Guilt is bad - the review above was 3 stars (but it didn't say what out of) - especially considering the rest of music out there, I'm just saying in relativity to Beck's own catalog.

*if anyone knows who the blonde Nico-esque looking chick is on the DVD i would like to know.
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

Alexandro

Quote from: bigideas on July 16, 2008, 08:10:05 AM
Quote from: Alexandro on July 15, 2008, 11:28:35 PM
I'm sorry, but the bottom line of every negative review I read about Beck boils down to the fact that he's not than fun anymore, in that crazy Odelay way. He ain't. It's over, let's move on.

My favorite Beck record is Mutations.
Something about Modern Guilt is so sterile.
None of the 'highs' of MG touch any of his other records for me.
It's as if he's on cruise control.

Maybe I'll warm up to it. Revisiting The Information recently, I've started to open up to it some more. I think there really is a great record amongst it's bloated frame if one can dig it out. I've been watching the DVD* recently and I have a new appreciation for the last two 'real' songs (the title track and Movie Theme).

To clarify, I don't even think Modern Guilt is bad - the review above was 3 stars (but it didn't say what out of) - especially considering the rest of music out there, I'm just saying in relativity to Beck's own catalog.

*if anyone knows who the blonde Nico-esque looking chick is on the DVD i would like to know.

I know what you mean and I agree with you. MG is sterile. It sounds sterile. And that's probably the point. "Fun" is not precisely the word I'd use to describe it. I've read some reviews with opinions so disimilar it's almost a joke. I've read one where they said Beck was fun again, and then right after that I read another one of this "he's not that fun anymore" reviews. I think MG is an uncomfortable album to listen to. The lyrics are heavier than usual, even more than Sea Change and Mutations, although he's always been a dark artist, with songs about dead all over every one of his records.

About the production, it is remarkable. The first time I listened to the album it seemed so simple, but then subsequent listens started to reveal all the details and layers that give a lot of the songs the right balance between a pop sensibility and the serious tone of the lyrics.

My problem with all these reviews (as the one above) is that even though they can't trash the music, since the music is better than most stuff out there, they go after the vibe of the music itself. As if going for a certain sound, a certain texture and succesfully achieving it is bad because the vibe is not nice and friendly. That 3 star review sounds like a 1 star review, and the critic basically says it's ok if Beck wants to be an adult as long as he still behaves like not that much of an adult.

Beck's lyrics and themes have been the same all along. His apocalyptic images and feelings anxiety and meditation on dead are his true trademark. Before Sea Change he used irony to cheer things up. Then he became more sincere, and he's not into being just "fun" anymore. Guero, so hated in general, it's gonna end up being a rarity i guess: the one time where he was bold enough to combine without irony both his dark view and his party instincts (that's why I wouldn't compare Odelay to Guero, as I see them, those are two fucking different planets).

Other artists, newer, can be as depressing as they want and go for "sterile" sounds and get a pass. But Beck doesn't cause he has this baggage of being a pop star or whatever. A lot of the reviews sound like those guys who don't lika a movie like There will be blood because it's not pleasant.

I'm sure you'll warm up to this album. I didn't like the information at first. Months later it slowly grew on me. It is a great album, as pretty much all the others.