beck

A Week With Beck's "The Information": Day 1

12 October 2006
tell your friends... tell your friends...

Words by Gabe Durham//Illustration by Josh Frankel
New Beck album? Already? Sure, I’m skeptical. My Beck fandom rose steadily from Mellow Gold and hit its peak in 2002 with the release of Sea Change. It was a beautiful album, filled with simpler songwriting, acoustic arrangements that gave the songs room to breathe, and finally, finally, some vulnerable, personal lyrics. Last year, Guero arrived. Not bad, not good—it rehashed some of his previous material, particularly Odelay, but with less care and enthusiasm. As a result, the melodies wore out quick. That was strike one. This summer, I saw Beck at Bonnaroo, my first live Beck experience. The performance scored high as a comedy show: there was a dancer, some puppets, a three-man utensils-and-plates rhythm section, a giant boom box, a bear costume, and a video of the puppets making fun of the Bonnaroo hippies. Somehow, the music got lost in the laughs. Beck half-assed his way through acoustic covers of Flaming Lips and Radiohead during the solo portion, and relied on loads of pre-recorded samples the rest of the time. The most bizarre moment in the set came when all the musicians left the stage, and the audience sang along with the original recording of “Loser”. I could have done that without flying to Tennessee. Strike two. Four months after the Bonnaroo performance, a new album shows up. Meet The Information, a CD/DVD/set of stickers produced by Nigel Godrich, who produced Sea Change and Beck’s 1998 folk album, Mutations. The Information began as a hip-hop project and slowly morphed into a more eclectic thing. Could be incredible, could be pretense for more indie god posturing and a lack of musical/lyrical content. If this album is no good, that will be strike three and reason enough to take him off my “Favorite Music” list on Facebook. Yet, right off the bat, I’m impressed with the stickers. There’s a sticker for each song on the album, a wind-up cassette tape, a keytar, an owlger (pretty much my favorite animal), a naked woman playing guitar, a “Wizard of Oz” winged monkey. A unique, varied assortment. If there’s a Grammy for stickers, Beck should win it. Hands down.

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Beck looks so young in that picture.

George Spelvin | 12 October 2006

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