Beck: Back!

It's a mystery how Beck has ended up becoming one of the those musicians whose albums that I never fail to buy. Especially since I don't really have a natural affinity for his American slacker-rock-rap style. Yet there is something about the guy that keeps me coming beck (haha).

I guess my odd liking for Beck started somewhere into the second track on his seminal "Odelay" album, which I have to admit I bought only because all the rave reviews meant any self-respecting music fan had to have a copy. Bewildered slightly by the ramshackle guitars and random screechy noises laid over an incongruous hip-hop beat, things took a bizarre twist for me when dreamlike flutes started playing like they were back-masked and voices came on...

"Who are you?"
"I'm the enchanting wizard of rhythm!"
"Why did you come here?"
"I came here to tell you about the rhythms of the universe..."

That's been pretty much my reaction to Beck albums. You never really understand them at first because they're always chock full of everything happening all at once and mumbo-jumbo lyrics sung by an American with what seems like a lot of cotton wool in his mouth.

Then suddenly, you realise the obiang bossanova beats on "Mutations" are quite sublime. And the awkwardly-loping electro-trash songs on the next album "Midnight Vultures" (with quite possibly the most vile cover artwork ever) are all quite Prince-like in their own relaxed way. And how you can't help but automatically turn up the volume and stay very still as you listen to the utterly brilliant next album "Sea Change", with its cheesy honky-tonk country & western songs of yearning and regret set to twinkly synths and sweeping orchestral arrangements. "Lonesome tears, I can't cry them anymore. I can't think of what they're for. Oh they ruin me everytime!"

Now, barely a year after the under-rated lo-fi "Guero" comes "The Information". This time, there is great hype. People are calling it a return to "Odelay" and giving it 5 stars, 9 out of 10. I'm excited by the cover that is just graph paper and free stickers, but as usual I don't really get it at first. Then in the middle of the 70s disco-funk groover "Cellphone's Dead", you hear a familiar sound. Trying to filter out the crazy girl who keeps saying "one by one I'll knock you out!" and the strange choir noises, you gradually realise that it is Indonesian traditional wedding music.

This is why Beck is the David Bowie of our generation. And yes, zyn, he is more genius than Jay Chou. A little more.