Word: becking
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...German peace feeler was a desperate maneuver by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, the police and the concentration camps, who had escaped from Berlin to the north German port of Lübeck. There he told a diplomat from neutral Sweden that Germany was willing to surrender to the Americans and British. At worst, Himmler thought, this would enable Germany to throw all its troops against the Soviets; at best, the Western Allies would join the German defense. Himmler seems even to have cherished the illusion that the Allies would support him, the lord of the Holocaust...
Guero’s influences stretch beyond old Beck material, embracing the inglorious lower tiers of pop culture and throwing them into the mix. Some of the electronic ditties, such as that of “Earthquake Weather,” recall the early 1990s childhood aesthetic of Super Mario Brothers or Sonic the Hedgehog. At other times Guero moves away from the standard beats and chord progressions of pop music to dabble in non-Western modes and rhythms; “Missing” is to Beck what “Within You, Without You?...
Returning closer to home, “Go It Alone” channels the blues tradition of American music with a head-bobbing beat and unflappable composure. A groove this good could only have come straight from the source: I can picture Beck wandering the back alleys and dirt-caked hamlets of the American South armed only with a good ear and a tape recorder, a latter-day Alan Lomax...
...half-lit world of Guero lies somewhere between the last drink and the first hangover, between the rowdiness of the cantina and the dreaminess of the artist’s studio. In this strange border country, Beck, the “guero,” the white boy, holds court among the ghosts of his previous releases and the dysmorphic specters of cultural miscellany...
...little new ground is covered in Guero—but since when has “new” categorically meant “better”? As long as there exist listeners who prefer sea glass to plate glass, urban decay to suburban sprawl, and redux to deluxe, Beck will maintain a corps of loyal fans. “My shivering voice is singing through a crack in the window, I’d better go it alone,” Beck murmurs. No need, Beck. We’re still here...