While we wait patiently for Beck’s 13th studio album, his first since 2014’s Grammy-winning Morning Phase, let’s enjoy a blast from the past in the form of ‘Peaches & Cream,’ a cut from his 1999 album Midnite Vultures.
Midnite Vultures, released in the midst of Y2K paranoia, before we lost our national innocence on 9/11, is a blissed-out vision of white boy funk on which Beck very effectively channels Prince.
Beck’s 1998 album Mutations remains one of my favorites. It’s a ramshackle, melancholy collection that proved to be a precursor to the lovely, sad-sack classics, Sea Change and Morning Phase, to come in the decades that followed.
Mutations isn’t as polished as those albums but it’s beautifully produced, sustaining an uneasy, almost post-apocalyptic, mood. It’s the soundtrack of the Earth depicted in the first half of WALL-E.
My last new song of the week comes courtesy of Beck, who offers up his first release since the gorgeous, melancholy Morning Phase won a surprise Album of the Year Grammy.
‘Wow’ is a world away from the Beck of Morning Phase and Sea Change, a lot closer to Odelay and Midnite Vultures. The brilliance of Beck is that he seems equally comfortable in both modes. Not many artists can pull off both soulful balladeer and space-age DJ.
I haven’t done an in-depth analysis of Random Weekend selections (though I’d love to) but I have a feeling that Beck is overrepresented.
Yes, he is relatively prolific. I own nine of his albums and 99 of his songs. But I feel like he shows up in the random mix more often than those numbers would suggest.
Meet Me In Montauk 