Artist: Beck
Album: Guero
Label: Interscope Records
Rating:
Reviewer: Sarah Moskowitz

Alright, take out some paper and a pen and be prepared to take notes. If you’re already a fan of music or are considering becoming one, try to heed by some simple unwritten rules that will help you to get by:
-There will always be someone who knows more about your favorite artist than you (so be prepared to be knocked off that high horse).
-The Rolling Stones’ next farewell tour won’t be their last (the mortality of these Brit rockers is debatable).
-Prince will wear rhinestones and assless pants regardless of what decade it is (as much as you may disapprove).
-And perhaps most importantly, you can’t ever go wrong with Beck (you just can’t).

Beck’s latest, Guero, is no exception to the trend. Let’s elaborate.

Every few years, Beck Hansen unleashes exactly what no one was expecting. His style is having no set style, and it’s what keeps fans coming back for more. So if you’re thinking that Guero is going to be anything like 2002’s melancholy, pensive, orchestra-fueled Sea Change, well, don’t be so naive. Keep in mind that Beck is a musical schizophrenic. We’re talking either a major identity crisis or passion for reinventing sound and consequently image. So anticipate each new album to rarely have similarity to a previous one, or minor ones if any.

This time around, Beck followed most closely in the footsteps of 1996’s Odelay. But don’t mistake the reintroduction of thumping, sampling and synthesizing into the Beck scene as a regression or lack of originality. Beck is more serious about music than to rip off his own work. What you might find in Guero, is a derivation from his old school rap and beat-friendly days. In Beck terms translates to a mish-mosh of illogical, sometimes nearly demented lyrics that inspire you to bust a move. For example, in the groovy “Hell Yes,” the line “rent-a-cops are watching/makin’ their dreams out of paper mache/cliché wasted hate taste tested” is mildly befuddling. But despite the elusiveness of the words, will the song make you want to do the robot? Hell yes. A good portion of the record is so hip-hop oriented that you might be able to envision the Beastie Boys vocalizing in place of Beck. However, the matter of his poetic skills remains questionable to anyone who may not own a copy of a Beck-English dictionary. Not that it’s a reason to discourage listening to it.

Maybe it’s the confidence, in which Beck sings, or maybe it’s how easy it is to get lost in his big blue eyes, but somehow those irrational ramblings are charming, even if they make no sense to the cognitively ordinary mind. What’s amazing is that even with significant changes from album to album, the quality of the music is not compromised. It’s why Beck is so highly respected, more than a decade after his debut, and why he creates successful records from so many musical angles. See that’s the thing about Beck – he doesn’t just make music, he creates it. He finds sounds that you may never think to fit together, and he layers and adjusts them until he’s cooked up a flawless audio parfait.

To show what you’ve learned, let’s recap the material covered in this lesson:
-Dust Brothers equal dancing.
-Incoherent jabber isn’t necessarily a negative thing.
-Beck Hansen does not disappoint. Any questions?