Word: becking
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...imitation is the highest form of flattery, then Beck Hansen has just established himself as a master of self-adulation. His new album Guero is in many ways a tribute not to his musical forbears, but to his own work of the past dozen years, with a few curve balls thrown in to prove he’s still an artist, not just an anthologist...
Tracks like the opener “E-Pro,” “Qué Onda Guero,” and “Hell Yes” flash back to good old danceable Beck à la Midnite Vultures or Odelay, while the middle of the album is largely an extension of the pendular, string-heavy sound of Sea Change. Since Beck’s previous work has ranged from very good to brilliant, however, these new renditions of older stylistic motifs are far from unwelcome...
...Hell Yes” Beck gently teases his own hipness by posturing as the paragon of cultural mass-production: “code red cola war conformity crisis / perfunctory idols rewriting their bibles…fax machine anthems get your damn hands...
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...