Word: becks
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...Radicals' current single, You Get What You Give, Gregg Alexander takes a swipe at Courtney Love, Beck and Marilyn Manson, singing, "You're all fakes/ Run to your mansions/ Come around/ We'll kick your a__ in." Make a statement like that, and you've got to back it up with material better than the music of the acts you've criticized. Well, while this album isn't a creative breakthrough, it does have charm and verve. A number of songs are anthem-like and uplifting, and when Alexander howls the choruses, he seems convinced that what he's doing...
Genre hopping is the favorite sport of today's pop stars, and few performers play the game better than Beck. On his major-label debut, Mellow Gold (1994), Beck helped re-energize folk motifs by combining them with hip-hop beats. On his new album, Mutations (DGC), Beck has mostly abandoned hip-hop. His new sound draws largely from older, traditional styles: pure folk, blues and, on the spirited song Tropicalia, bossa nova. The energy of Beck's hip-hop/folk experimentation is missed here; this is a ruminative album that's more about quiet revelation than sonic revolution...
Still, there is something coolly mesmerizing and wonderfully disturbing about the CD. Beck's lyrics, though elusive, are not nonsense. They obsess about issues of death and decay, and they strike at something deep, evoking feelings of sadness, melancholy and regret. "A worm of hope/ a hangman's rope/ pulls me one way or the other," he sings on Cold Brains. On another track he sings, "Treated you like a rusty blade/ A throwaway from an open grave...
...Beck's voice on this album sounds worn and weary, as if he's seen it all and seen enough. Everything seems disposed or disposable; his song titles include Cancelled Check, Lazy Flies and Dead Melodies. Yet, calmed by his voice, we lean closer, listen closely. Beck's music does not overwhelm his musings...
...addition to the usual Burger King tie-in, Lincoln Mercury is running commercials that promote both the film and a new minivan. The movie's sound track includes a spectrum of old and new hipsters: Busta Rhymes and Iggy Pop, Lisa Loeb and Lou Rawls, Beck and DEVO (whose co-begetter, Mark Mothersbaugh, wrote the film's score). There is also The Rugrats Movie itself, a knowing festival of pop-cultural citations, evocations and plain old rip-offs. Says Albie Hecht of Nickelodeon, which conducted "parent-focused research" to broaden the project's salability: "We worked hard to make sure...