"Oh, if I could be like Beck …"
That's the thought running through the heads of aspiring producers, hipsters and musicians everywhere now that Beck has created yet another tripped-out but articulate music-junkie masterpiece with his latest record. I wouldn't be surprised if some have been losing sleep over the hip-hop folk-rocker's crisp beats and haunting vocals ever since The Information dropped earlier this month.
But what's even more intimidating than Beck's newest masterpiece is the tradition behind it. For over a decade now, the 36-year-old artist has been making record after groundbreaking record, putting his trademark spin on every genre imaginable without ever really repeating himself.
How can an artist become a cult favorite and perennial hit-maker at the same time? How can an act stay vital a decade after its debut? The answer to these pressing questions is simple — be more like Beck.
Striking Mellow Gold
In many ways, Beck's complex pastiche of sounds and genres reflects his hometown of L.A., where he was born in 1970 to a Canadian composer father and an artist mother who hung out with Andy Warhol.
It was in L.A. in 1991 that the owners of Bong Load Records discovered the musician and set him up with a hip-hop producer to record several songs. These included the future hit "Loser," which meshes a drum-machine beat with a "Dr. John" sample to create the perfect background for his rambling, nonsensical rap and defiant, non sequitur-filled chorus. The slacker anthem established Beck as an edgy art-rocker, a convenient halfway point between the Beastie Boys and the Grateful Dead to which young suburbanites would flock in droves.
The song's success allowed Beck to sign a loose contract with Geffen that was just as unusual as the artist's burgeoning sound, granting Beck the right to continue to release material on small labels. At the same time, Geffen garnered national attention for his platinum debut Mellow Gold.
Mellow Gold took '90s pop-culture angst to new heights, combining Beck's lackadaisical lyricism and sedate vocal delivery with beat-heavy, lo-fi rock for results that could be unexpectedly catchy ("Fuckin With My Head (Mountain Dew Rock)") or pointless ("Nitemare Hippy Girl"). The entire album seemed to reek of marijuana and burritos straight out of the package, and joke songs like "Truckdrivin Neighbors Downstairs (Yellow Sweat)" didn't help the image, leading many to dismiss Beck as a soon-to-be-dated fringe phenomenon.
The Odelay grab-bag
Beck released two independent-label albums in 1994, but neither was a true follow-up to the promising bum-rock of Mellow Gold. Sophomore albums are often more difficult than debuts, arriving already weighed-down by commercial and critical expectations. Beck, as oblivious as always to the demands of the outside world, went into the studio with the Dust Brothers production team and emerged with a menagerie of irreverently retro grooves, quirky samples and punk sensibility. The eclectic potpourri of sounds made even the suburban kid who bought the album just because he saw the "Devil's Haircut" video on MTV feel like a chain-smoking hipster music aficionado.
The seminal "Where It's At" led the charge with strong examples of all these qualities, but overlooked tracks round out the album. The microwaved country of "Lord Only Knows" proved Beck's versatility and cemented his reputation as an underground quasi-prophet with a deliberately botched guitar solo and ridiculous but pointed lyrics. As with everything else, Beck already seemed to scorn his status as the new hot thing: "Don't call us when the new age gets old enough to drink," he drawls on "Lord Only Knows."
The Aftermath: Midnite Vultures, Mutations, Sea Change
Although Beck had carved a niche for his trademark grab-bag sound, he abandoned the beat- and sample-driven premise of Odelay for his next three albums. It was a sidestep commercially, but earned Beck the undying admiration of true music aficionados even as a shortage of radio singles tuned out everyone else.
Mutations, a gloomy take on folk music, found Beck exchanging his far-out collages of samples and beats for even farther-out groupings of live instruments. Designed for independent release, the album was co-opted by Geffen and released to relative commercial success, but that did nothing to diminish the musical mastery of a track list that included "Here Comes the Sun"-style acoustic pop, trippy white-man blues and even a Latin number.
The official follow-up to Odelay, Midnite Vultures, was an even more bizarre turn of events, as Beck channeled R&B, funk and techno sounds to create an over-sexed dance record. From its crude, slightly obscene cover of the epic soul jam "Debra," which finishes off the record, Midnite Vultures draws upon the most outrageous facets of pop culture through the '80s and '90s. Beck's all over the place: "Peaches & Cream" seems to borrow its refrain from a Duran Duran cut; "Hollywood Freaks" simultaneously celebrates and mocks bling-bling hip-hop with an incessant "He my daaawwgg!" background vocal; and "Get Real Paid" tips its hat to trance and house as Beck's processed vocals emulate a choir of automated Japanese schoolgirls.
The aptly titled Sea Change provided the ultimate counterpoint to Midnite Vultures with an utterly mellow and heartfelt documentation of the end of a relationship. Beck's lyrics are more biting than ever, even as they incorporate tragic emotional musings.
The album also features the best use of a string section on any pop or rock record in recent memory, thanks to the arrangements of Beck's father, David Campbell. Instead of using strings to flesh out slow, weepy tunes of love lost, Campbell and Beck employ them like a Guns 'N Roses guitar solo, using them judiciously to bring songs like "Paper Tiger" to a soaring climax.
The Guero returns to his roots
Just when most listeners had pegged as a lost cause Beck having another commercial success to rival Odelay, the artist came out with Guero, a breezy collection of bouncing electro-pop tunes and down-tempo grooves that was the perfect soundtrack album for summer 2005. The disc played like a revamped Odelay, catapulting Beck back onto the airwaves with hypnotically danceable fare like "E-Pro" and "Hell Yes." The album broke some new ground as well; despite Guero's many Odelay-esque touches, Beck melded in the acoustic melancholia of Mutations and Sea Change on underrated tracks like "Scarecrow" and "Earthquake Weather."
Beck's latest release, however, trumps Guero in terms of innovation. In the MP3 era, the art of album making has been in steady decline, and it seems only a matter of time until new music is released through the Internet on a song-by-song basis. The Information attempts to adapt to this new musical landscape through bonuses like low-budget music videos for every track and a fully customizable cover.
The music matches the lofty packaging goals; this time, Beck has even pushed his producer into the deep end of new musical territory. Whereas Nigel Goodrich, best known for his work with Radiohead, has typically produced mellow, melodic albums, The Information utilizes a healthy amount of the DJ-like flourishes that typified Beck's early music, including melodies created with a touchtone phone.
As with Midnite Vultures, Beck cites several influences, from the Exile on Main Street-styled "Strange Apparition" to "Soldier Jane," which sounds like an Air outtake. "Think I'm In Love" features a softer side of Beck that hasn't shown through since Sea Change, and not even really then.
With the way Beck effortlessly sweeps up the scraps from all of his previous releases and incorporates classic influences to create his most amorphous and successful album yet, younger artists have good reason to be intimidated. It's not every artist who can transform his or her sound so deftly from album to album. But in doing so lies the key to musical success and artistic freedom: that tricky balance of opposites Beck achieves so easily.
Oh, if I could be like Beck …
