Word: guero
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Besides, some aspects of Guero are neither self-referential nor culturally referential but brilliantly, confoundingly novel. “Girl,” for example, uses a breezy surf-rock melody to carry the narrative voice of a deranged, possibly homicidal voyeur...
...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” was for George Harrison on Sgt. Pepper...
...Although Guero is a patchwork of “other” sounds, and never settles on one of its own, to call the album unoriginal is to miss the point. The album further refines Beck’s technique of appropriation-as-aesthetic, and the results are marvelous. Many of Beck’s lyrics deserve the title of poetry, bringing to mind T.S. Eliot’s adage that “immature poets imitate; mature poets steal...
...could be viewed alternatively as a morose grown-up’s take on Alice and Wonderland or a child’s fantastic documentation of life under dictatorship. Normally I find album visuals irrelevant at best, annoying and distracting at worst, but somehow these ghoulishly lovely illustrations complement Guero wonderfully, like marginalia to an illuminated manuscript...
...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...