FEATURE:
Second Spin
Beck - Guero
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I have run a feature concerning…
Beck’s album, Guero, but I think it is very underrated and deserves new attention. Guero is fifteen today (29th March), and I think it is Beck’s best album. Sure, most people would highlight Odelay as being his defining moment, but I prefer the sounds and range on Guero. It is hard to pinpoint, but it is that combination of Odelay’s experimentation and the new, exciting Brazilian influences on Guero that makes things sizzle and pop! The album is awash with different moods and sides. Produced with the Dust Brothers and Tony Hoffer, Beck stepped away from the more desolated and personal sound that we heard onSea Change (2002), and he showed why he is such an innovative and unpredictable artist. So many critics overlooked Guero when it came out, and others unfavourably compared it with Odelay. Although his 2005 gem did get a lot of positive reviews, it is not mentioned alongside his all-time great albums – that is an oversight and shame. Guero warrants a second spin on its fifteenth anniversary. From the rush and electronic crunch of opener, E-Pro, to the bouncing Girl; the shimmering Black Tambourine to the Jack White-feature Go It Alone (he plays bass), Guero has it all! I will bring in a few reviews soon enough but, before then, one needs to look at Beck’s discography and marvel at his brilliance! Most artists stick to a certain style, but Beck never stands still! Indeed, each album provides something fresh, and I think Guero is its own boss and deserves a lot of love.
I remember buying the album in 2005, and I was not sure what to expect. When I played it the whole way through, I had to sit back and take it all in! One is treated to shifts and turns that you do not anticipate; there are some wonderfully-sung songs whilst others rely more on the composition. I think Beck wanted to return to a more fun and freewheelin’ sound after Sea Change, and a lot of the anxiety and gloom that lingered in the air following the terrorist attacks in America in 2001. In their positive review, this is what AllMusic had to say:
“Ever since his thrilling 1994 debut with Mellow Gold, each new Beck album was a genuine pop cultural event, since it was never clear which direction he would follow. Kicking off his career as equal parts noise-prankster, indie folkster, alt-rocker, and ironic rapper, he's gone to extremes, veering between garishly ironic party music to brooding heartbroken Baroque pop, and this unpredictability is a large part of his charm, since each album was distinct from the one before. That remains true with Guero, his eighth album (sixth if you don't count 1994's Stereopathetic Soul Manure and One Foot in the Grave, which some don't), but the surprising thing here is that it sounds for all the world like a good, straight-ahead, garden-variety Beck album, which is something he'd never delivered prior to this 2005 release.
In many ways, Guero is deliberately designed as a classicist Beck album, a return to the sound and aesthetic of his 1996 masterwork, Odelay. After all, he's reteamed with the producing team of the Dust Brothers, who are widely credited for the dense, sample-collage sound of Odelay, and the light, bright Guero stands in stark contrast to the lush melancholy of 2002's Sea Change while simultaneously bearing a knowing kinship to the sound that brought him his greatest critical and commercial success in the mid-'90s. This has all the trappings of being a cold, calculating maneuver, but the album never plays as crass. Instead, it sounds as if Beck, now a husband and father in his mid-thirties, is revisiting his older aesthetic and sensibility from a new perspective. The sound has remained essentially the same -- it's still a kaleidoscopic jumble of pop, hip-hop, and indie rock, with some Brazilian and electro touches thrown in -- but Beck is a hell of a lot calmer, never indulging in the lyrical or musical flights of fancy or the absurdism that made Mellow Gold and Odelay such giddy listens. He now operates with the skill and precision of a craftsman, never dumping too many ideas into one song, paring his words down to their essentials, mixing the record for a wider audience than just his friends. Consequently, Guero never is as surprising or enthralling as Odelay, but Beck is also not trying to be as wild and funny as he was a decade ago.
He's shifted away from exaggerated wackiness -- which is good, since it wouldn't wear as well on a 34 year old as it would on a man a decade younger -- and concentrated on the record-making, winding up with a thoroughly enjoyable LP that sounds warm and familiar upon the first play and gets stronger with each spin. No, it's not a knockout, the way his first few records were, but it's a successful mature variation on Odelay, one that proves that Beck's sensibility will continue to reap rewards for him as he enters his second decade of recording”.
Even if you are not a big Beck fan, you can appreciate Guero, as it is a blend of the more contemplative and upbeat. I don’t think there is a weak track on the album, and Guero gets stronger and more compelling by the spin! I never tire of the album, and I think more people need to hear it. When they reviewed the album, here is what Rolling Stone had to say:
“Throughout Guero, Beck dips deeply into Latin rhythms, reveling in the street culture of the East L.A. neighborhood where he grew up. “Que Onda Guero” is a walk through the barrio, with traffic noises and overheard Spanglish voices over Latin guitars and hip-hop beats. Guero is slang for “white guy”; Beck’s an outsider here. The song ends with some stranger saying, “Let’s go to Captain Cork’s — they have the new Yanni cassette!” “Hell Yes” and “Black Tambourine” sound like they were knocked off in a session that began, “Hey, let’s do some of those wacky, zany numbers we used to do,” but they’re still pretty great.
Guero will get Beck accused of copying Odelay, but it has a completely different mood. Tune in “Missing” or “Earthquake Weather,” and you can’t miss the melancholy adult pang in the vocals. The closest he comes to a funny line on the album is “The sun burned a hole in my roof/I can’t seem to fix it.” Which isn’t too close. Beck is thirty-four now and can’t pretend to be the same wide-eyed, channel-surfing kid who buzzed with wiseass charisma on Mellow Gold, Odelay and Stereopathetic Soulmanure. On Guero, he sounds like an extremely bummed-out dude who made it to the future and discovered he hates it there. The lyrics are abstractly morbid — lots of graves, lots of devils. Nearly every song has a dead body or two kicking around. At times, Guero feels as emotionally downbeat as Mutations or Sea Change. But there’s a crucial difference: The rhythmic jolt makes the malaise more compelling and complex, with enough playful musical wit to hint at a next step. Beck isn’t trying to replicate what he did ten years ago; instead, on Guero he finds a way to revitalize his musical imagination, without turning it into a joke”.
I will wrap up in a second, but I wonder where Beck will head next. His current album, Hyperspace (2019), was another wonderful step, and it seems like this music great will never tire and stop producing genius music. If you are not sure where to start with Beck, I would say Guero is as good a place as ever.
As the album is fifteen today, I will definitely be playing it again and diving into its alluring and colourful waters. Before ending this feature, I just want to bring in one more review:
“There's a seriousness to many of the lyrics on Guero -- "E-Pro" is supposedly the return to happy dance music, yet it ends with the line, "There's too much left to taste that's bitter." Other songs find Beck feeling taunted by harsh memories, and anticipating death. But that isn't anything new. Even his earliest recordings were fascinated with death, discord and disappointment. But the tone and approach have changed; he's not inquisitively wondering about death, he's singing about feeling absolutely devestated and run-down, feeling like the end of the line is near. And even when the lyrics are playful, his voice has a solemnity to it which says that he's not just kidding around.
On one level, Guero is the quintessential Beck album, incorporating aspects of everything he's done. The music feels like the funky hip-hop-flavored pop music that everyone associates with him, yet there's also elements of at least some of the other styles of music in which he dabbles. "Missing" picks up on the bossa nova feeling which Beck indulged in on 1998's Mutations, "Black Tambourine" resonates with the echos of the lusty Prince jones that Beck exorcised so thoroughly on Midnite Vultures, and blues guitar pops up on tracks like "Broken Drum" and "Farewell Ride".
Yet in tone these songs all carry with them the heaviness of Sea Change, whether it's right on the surface or buried inside the sounds of his voice. This is the changed Beck: even when he's having fun he sounds serious about it. There's sadness in his voice even when he's being playful. One of the lightest songs in tone, the melodic, sounds-like-a-hit "Girl", balances infectious, breezy music with Beck singing darkly about making his girl die, stealing her eye”.
Guero is a wonderful album, and it – as I said – gets overlooked by many people and critics. If you are wondering what albums you should be spinning to keep you occupied at the moment, you cannot go wrong with…
THE sensational Guero.