REVIEW: Beck "Guero"

Rating: 7

Let's review the major label life of Mr. Hansen (Beck, His Beckness):

Mellow Gold - faux slacker art folk funk with influences equally spread between Zappa and Fat Albert's junk yard band

Odelay - populist sample rock done well, public megaphone announcement of Beck the Rock Star's arrival

Mutations - down beat south of the border blues that seemingly came from left field after Odelay's upbeat success

Midnight Vultures - Beck flexes his libido and airs long hidden, strangely parallel Prince / Kraftwerk fixations

Sea Change - sad sack wrist-slitter supossedly brought on by a nasty break-up, but guess what - Beck can actually sing!

Guero - all of the above, prioritized as follows: Odelay aged in the barrel 9 years + Mutations minus the honky slide guitars + Mellow Gold cleaned of its grunge but still dusty below the knees + Midnight Vultures' swagger and some percussion but none of the backseat lip licking + Sea Change's voice and maturity without the numbingly beautiful depression.

***

Rumors of a new Beck "rock" album started to fly about two minutes after Sea Change cooled.  As if to confirm and reward his eager fans Beck launches "Guero" with a healthy John Bonham kick drum and throaty guitar riff on "E-Pro."  Track two is taco-truck funk, three a top pop tooth-ache, four ("Missing," my favorite) is a sweetly crooned samba tune, and by five we rock again but those apes from The Jungle Book swing in to play the drums.  It's Beck, so all bets are off really.

There's so much print on Beck these days it's hard to toss even a few more words onto the pile since I know they'll slide off.  Most of it isn't even about the album but about his non-stick surface.  The guy has successfully avoided genre pinning and personal exposure, opting instead for impressive but impersonal tags like "inventive, fearless" and even, gasp, "genius."  I put those words in quotes to make you think I found them someplace else but I didn't.

I'm sure someone (Beck's PR team) is relieved that there is finally a Beck album that isn't a manic divergence from previous work, perhaps ending the back and forth pendulum ride that has so frustrated fans and critics of one disc or another.  Or maybe Beck's genre dipping has generated a palette colorful enough to sustain itself for awhile.  I think that's the thing that hangs me up on this album.  Beck has proved himself to be primarily two things: an expert dumpster diver, processing pop culture highs and lows through his twitchy music-machine head to reveal shiny new facets still reminiscent of their source; and, when properly motivated, a writer of striking, universal, emotion-rich songs, and I don't just mean the sad ones.

Each previous effort, though a stylistic stranger to the others, made good use of these strengths while pushing Beck the Persona in one fairly clear direction or another.  "Guero" plays almost like a Beck on Beck with hints at several directions, each interesting but hardly sustained.  Optimistically it's Beck taking stock creatively and seeing that, in the memorable words of God, "It is Good."  Our friend the devil's advocate might call it "unfocused."  Anyone who knows me knows my glass is always at least half full.