Never mind that Beck looks
approximately 15. Never mind that he previewed songs from Guero, his eighth
album, on The O.C. He’s 34 years old, married, and a new father. Is it
any surprise that his decision to re-enlist the Dust Brothers, the
beat scientists behind his double-platinum Odelay, has been roundly
dismissed as the desperate ploy of an aging hipster? One of the
callow wags at Pitchfork actually called him middle-aged. Ouch. But it’s
inescapable: The golden boy of ’90s indie rock is getting
older, and, given Clear Channel’s stranglehold on the
commercial airwaves, a return to his improbable 1996 success seems
unlikely. He’s a loser, so why don’t we kill him, baby?
Rather than a cynical rehash of his Odelay heyday, Guero represents a
synthesis of Beck’s stylistic personae. From One Foot in the Grave’s
slacker cowboy to Mellow Gold’s po-mo MC to Odelay’s bargain-bin bricoleur to Midnite Vultures’ self-mocking playboy to Mutations’ tropicalia
troubadour to Sea Change’s heartbroken chamber-folkie, Beck has
reinvented himself with nearly every album. But how many times can
you reinvent yourself before you learn to live in your own skin?
Unless he’s planning to dabble in gamelan or black metal on
his next release (and with Beck, who knows?), it stands to reason
that his music is beginning to sound familiar more than 10 years
into a prolific career.
Guero proves that
familiarity doesn’t necessarily breed contempt. Sure, you can
play the geek’s game of matching each new song with a
precursor from the back catalog — “E-Pro” might
be an Odelay outtake; “Missing” wouldn’t be out of
place on Mutations; “Broken Drum” sounds like another gorgeous Sea Change downer
— but you’d be doing both Beck and yourself a
disservice. It’s much more rewarding to notice the way that he’s incorporating all
of the past decade’s experiments into a cohesive whole, the way
that he’s investing earlier themes with fresh insights. If
previous Beck CDs sometimes sounded like ironic genre exercises, Guero sounds like a
collection of songs by someone who’s — gulp! —
matured. It’s not really a retrospective so much as an
integration.
Although Guero offers many moments of
two-turntables-and-a-microphone-styled delirium, handclap-peppered
party anthems that would, in a just world, righteously rule the Top
40 à la OutKast’s “Hey Ya!”, Guero is a serious
album. This is not to say that it lacks humor (dig the uncredited
Christina Ricci cameo on “Hell Yes,” for instance),
just that it isn’t merely a goof designed to amuse
self-loathing young Caucasoids. As 2002’s Sea Change demonstrated (to
those who weren’t really listening to Mutations), there’s
more to Beck than shiny pink pants, obscure samples, and random
stonerisms. Even on seemingly lighthearted songs, recurring themes
of death, isolation, loss, and destruction abound, unsettling
harbingers that pierce the frivolity like maggots in a cupcake.
With its filthy guitar hooks and Beastie Boys sample, opening track
“E-Pro” na-na-nas its way to pop nirvana, but listen to the closing
lines: “It’s sick the way these tongues are twisted/The
good in us is all we know/There’s too much left to taste
that’s bitter.” “Girl” mixes jerky electro,
early-’90s fuzz riffage, giddy vocal harmonies, and even an
oddball country-blues bridge into a confection so delectable that
you almost forget it’s about murder as the ultimate romantic
conquest. From the Jack White collaboration “Go It
Alone” to the unexpectedly tender “Emergency
Exit,” the 13 cuts on Guero all share a ruinous, blasted beauty. Once, Beck was
the consummate insider; Guero sounds like an outsider’s pre-emptive elegy
for a precious, precarious world that never really got him anyway.
This article appears in Apr 14-20, 2005.
