Beck
Guero

THE REVIEW

At the recent concert at the Islington Academy, it is said that Beck Hansen lost his temper. Urged to play any old song (after half a dozen unreleased compositions), he seemingly declined the request, repeatedly telling the nostalgic fan where to go. Apparently, Beck truly believes in the new album; we disagree, but that's another story.

I'll be honest: if "Guero" hadn't been preceded by a work as painful as it is brilliant like "Sea Change," my foolish words would probably be different. By writing Round The Bed, Beck secured both my eternal admiration and the fierce, hyper-critical anticipation that derives from it.
I granted much time to "Guero," more than the album itself demanded; I feasted on its coils for so long that my own days seemed to transform into a rainbow of wild colors, where Woody Guthrie meets the Talking Heads in the decaying streets of Mexico City, as yet another rainy day comes to an end.

Beck's latest effort is a barely concealed return to the naive craziness of "Odelay," to a technicolor vision of the world, to a love for gospel and Delta blues, for certain music of the past and some yet to come, to bleak and bare images like the scarecrow of Scarecrow, making its way through a dying and lonely crowd (“a scarecrow that in reality scares no one - a parody of itself” - Beck).
It’s the impactful rock ride in the opening of E-pro, it’s the hip-hop and fragmented sounds of the title track, the Kraftwerk explosions and folk-rap fused together by splashes of madness (Girl).
But above all, it’s the failed imitation of Waits’s genius in Got It Alone and the half misstep of Broken Drum; it is an unfinished work, a not very ironic collage of past glories. Moreover, preceded by an imaginative album like "Sea Change," and just as that seemed dictated by the needs of the heart, so this one seems dictated by mere exercises in style.