The whole album feels slightly melancholy, which is no bad thing because it makes it more atmospheric, I gave it five stars because although it sounds derivative I think the production makes it original and unusual. The record's front cover, a picture of Beck tangled in plastic wrap, was taken by the music photographer Autumn de Wilde. It was a startling turn at the time, the effortlessly cool guy from “Where It’s At” asking aloud, “Pointing a finger, throw the book at you/ And who would want to dance with you? No videos were made for the album, and aside from appearing on Saturday Night Live, Beck did little to promote it, but such was his stature at the time that the album eventually went platinum and won Best Alternative Music Album Grammy.

He had become such a shorthand for “Smart But Accessible Alt-Culture Figure” that MillerCoors even shamelessly ripped off his whole steez for a beer campaign based around a slacker character named Dick. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. It is possible that Beck knows when he sings in a strained falsetto about wanting to nail your sister, he knows he’ll get a laugh, and that he knows when he sings in a resigned lower register about feeling “unmoved, untouched, unglued” in “Cold Brains,” he knows he’ll get a sigh of recognition from anyone that has ever felt sad and unmoored (which is to say, anyone), and he’s a skillful enough performer that he knows how to hit both marks. But after hearing Mutations, Geffen pulled rank and insisted on releasing the album, marketing it as a detour for hardcore Beck fans while he stayed hard at work on the “real” follow-up to Odelay.

The gulf between those two says a lot about Beck (and also about what some critics like to champion, but that’s a discussion for another day), but its also what makes him so hard to pin down. But while Beck is a scholar of music, he’s never been content with merely reproducing his record collection. It is blues-influenced and he sings moving lyrics about heart ache and the sadness of life, themes which fit his voice perfectly. Mutations would prove that Beck could do sincerity, or at least Sincerity, just fine thank you very much, and the woozy, operatic country rock he summons here in many ways feels like a blueprint that Mike Mogis and Conor Oberst would follow with Bright Eyes, where the slowly unraveling ballad “Static,” tucked all the way at the end of the album, feels like Beck’s big budget answer to the delicate balladry Cat Power and Elliott Smith were getting up to, declaring “it’s a perfect day to lock yourself inside” as the guitar solo shrugs and the keyboard lines evaporates. Beck Hansen has had one of the most interesting and singular career arcs of any musician of his generation, and his sixth album, Mutations, marked a turning point in a catalog filled with turning points.

Spectre sonore respecté et pas ou peu de craquements audibles, plus qu'à espérer un repressage de ce niveau pour "Midnite Vultures". Of course, no one stays in their imperial period forever, and one can only imagine how Beck felt, watching as the wildly free-flowing sound he and the Dust Brothers created on Odelay was immediately turned into frat-boy fodder by the likes of Smash Mouth and Sugar Ray. He lodged alt-rock radio hits in an era where that still mattered, performed at the Grammys, losing Album Of The Year to Celine Dion. However, when Geffen executives heard the album, they reneged on their agreement and released the record. It is kind of fatalistic and yet somehow makes you feel that you can survive the dark times, almost as if you are observing them from the outside.I've recently set my phone to shuffle the entire Beck collection and while "Mutations" is not my favorite Beck album all the songs fit in seamlessly with the overall experience. The lyrics are also much more somber and serious than those on Odelay, apparent in the songs "Nobody's Fault but My Own" and "Dead Melodies". Hence, I definitely think this should be in your Beck collection and if you're more of a fan of Mellow Gold than his newer stuff you will definitely not be disappointed. It is also possible that “real Beck” is yet another guise this chameleon of a performer decided to put on, in the process making us question if “real” really means anything at all. genre this would fall into , maybe blues , folk perhaps some of it , I normally find genres a bit confusing perhaps Beck has one all his own, although his albums all seem different you can tell he's put a lot of work into this.

Mutations is filled with dozens of tiny little Beckisms, choices only he would make, be it contrasting a wheezing harmonica with sci-fi synth wiggles on “Cold Brains,” undercutting the Beatles-like reverie of “We Live Again” with dread-inducing negative space or spicing his Brazilian-music homage “Tropicalia” with post-modern lyrics about isolation and a noisy sound collage. Full disclosure, I have mixed feelings about the SHM-CD format, primarily that it seems nothing more than a cash grab, but this HDCD encoded edition is surprising in how good it sounds. There's an off-the-cuff wit to the songwriting, especially on Canceled Check and Bottle of Blues, and the performances are natural, relaxed, and laid-back, without ever sounding complacent. O Maria” might revolve around an oddly moving couplet that signifies the need to grow up already (“Everybody knows/ the circus is closed”) but it glides by on a ’60s melody that feels cloned from Donovan.The production style was very different from that of Beck's previous album Odelay, which was heavily influenced by hip hop music and contained many samples. But honestly, this is probably because of the album highlight “Nobody’s Fault But My Own,” which finds Beck beating himself up over unspecified mistakes over a sea of psychedelic strings that could have been sampled from Rubber Soul. It's definitely worth tracking down for the 'Every little nook and cranny Beck did in the 90s' collector. Really surprised at this lp , reissues seldom sound this good , if this lp is missing from your collection its worth having , if your 1st pressing is a little scratched and worn then this is one of those rare occasions where a reissue doesn't mean loss of quality. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

Or maybe Beck is telling you who he is every time he hits the microphone, and if he contradicts himself each time, if he’s telling you that he’s the heartbroken kid and also the goofy dad and also the sex freak and also the guy worried about the end of the world and also the guy who just wants to make you dance, then that’s how we know we can believe him. Beck had worked out an unprecedented deal with Geffen Records that would allow him, in theory, to release albums with smaller labels, which is how K Records was able to release his collection of early lo-fi recordings One Foot In The Grave and Flipside released his hodgepodge Stereopathetic Soulmanure the same year as Geffen released his official debut Mellow Gold. Every time I put this album on I definitely here something new, it seems to possess some sought of narrative.

Tout est dans le titre, on savait que l'album était bon au format CD, on sait maintenant que ce pressage vinyle (Geffen / Bong Load Records 2017) est superbe. The original plan was that Bong Load Records, the tiny Los Angeles label that first released Beck’s breakout “Loser” would also release Mutations. Before beginning the recording sessions, Beck gained permission from the major label he was under contract with, Geffen, to release Mutations on the small indie label Bong Load Records.