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Beck: Guero
Interscope, 2005
Rating: 3.4
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Posted:
March 30,
2005
By
Laurence Station
Beck’s albums have rarely been well-sequenced. On a brilliantly
scattershot release like Odelay, sequencing hardly matters. On the
equally scattershot but considerably less successful Guero, it simply
amplifies a frustrating sense that a really great album could have been
assembled from the assorted bits and pieces. Worse, three of Guero’s
best songs don’t even appear on the standard-issue, 13-track release. The
nimble, “Devil’s Haircut”-aping “Send A Message To Her,” the raucously loose
“Chain Reaction” and the uninhibited digital funk-fest “Clap Hands” are only
available to those who pony up the extra shekels for the deluxe version.
Guero is all over the map but the majority of its detours simply aren’t
worth the trip.
Not that Beck and primary Odelay collaborators The Dust Brothers
misfire horrendously. If anything, there’s a retrospectively safe, “sounds
like something Beck would do” vibe throughout. “Girl” is a more
user-friendly “New Pollution.” The hook isn’t nearly as strong, but the
sunnily upbeat tune provides disposable pop with a distinctly Beck-ian
slant. “Earthquake Weather” is an unfinished holdover from the Midnite
Vultures sessions that languidly addresses “space ships” and “purple
skies” but without the P-Funk energy to take it anywhere useful. “Farewell
Ride” and “Emergency Exit” show off Beck’s folksy blues influence, but
neither rises to the playfully pleading level of “Lord Only Knows.”
Though lacking the punch of lead track “E-Pro,” the better constructed
“Scarecrow,” with its funky beat and shuffling groove, certainly deserves an
earlier appearance than ninth in the queue. The preceding, elegant “Broken
Drum” (co-produced by Tony Hoffer) is another strong cut that arrives too
late in the mix to counterbalance the comparatively weak material populating
the first half. The bossa nova-flavored “Missing” and the tribal
drumbeat-driven “Black Tambourine” are solid enough numbers, but the vocoder
and harmonica piece “Hell Yes” is a doomed dance misstep that includes the
bafflingly dreadful, Jay-Z knockoff line “Fax machine anthems get your damn
hands up” and elicits images of Dilbert and his fellow office workers doing
the robot (badly).
Guero (which apparently is Spanish slang for “white boy”) is the
first Beck album that doesn’t surprise you. Detractors may harp on
Sea Change’s fun-free,
late-night-drive moroseness, but it certainly sounded like no other release
in the stylistically hyper-curious artist’s catalog. The same can be said
for the vivid yet lyrically dark popcraft of Mutations and the wildly
hit-or-miss, spastic sonic experimentalism of Stereopathetic Soul Manure.
Guero incorporates aspects of a whole body of work. In this respect,
it’s not so different from
the last
Radiohead album. But Guero’s hooks aren’t as strong as those of
earlier Beck songs. And for all the early hype about a return to the
high-energy, pre-Millennial Beck of Odelay, Guero is more Diet
Rite than Red Bull.
Regarding the standard-versus-deluxe pocketbook conundrum, Guero is
one instance where the expanded edition (including the obligatory “Take
that, filesharers!” DVD) is the best bet. With seven additional tracks (four
of which are so-so remixes), Guero Deluxe is the easy candidate for
those so inclined to rip and re-sequence the ingredients into a more
appealing mix. But the bigger issue here is that buyers shouldn’t have to go
to such lengths to tease out a solid Beck album.
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