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Beck very well may be the most important musician on the planet. For starters, name one artist who sounds like Beck. Sure, there are influences that you can pick out - everything from hip-hop, funk, punk, soul, Brazilian, country, The Beatles, to rock and more, but name someone, anyone, who sounds even remotely similar to Beck Hansen. So there's that.
But simply sounding completely original does not make you the artist of the day. You could splatter crap against a wall and sound different; Beck has something else. Besides the fact that his music sounds so damn cool and stretches such a vast distance, he's also viable to the mainstream. This may be the key factor in quantifying Beck's absolute greatness and importance. He is doing what so few, if any (Prince comes to mind), are able to do in today's musical climate. Beck follows his muse with no regard to marketing or sales, and he is embraced commercially. To make the type of music Beck makes, jumping wildly from album to album (and from one "target market" to another) he should suffer monetarily, but somehow his message reaches the people. This is the difference. There are several original musical geniuses making music right now, probably more than we even know, but none of them achieve the numbers and the scope of influence Beck does.
Guero - Beck's latest - sounds like the melting pot of his existence, but that's always been his calling card. If there's been one thread that has tied the Beck juggernaut together, it's the fact that he's constantly taking in the culture that surrounds him and filtering it into what is undoubtedly Beck. Growing up in a colorful L.A. neighborhood, Beck would often hear the word "Guero," which loosely means "blond-haired white boy" in Spanish, wrapping around street corners or coming down off balconies. This is just one minor example of how Beck takes it all in, but it speaks to the mind-set this 34 year old white boy uses when making his music.
The fact that Guero is most closely related to the 1996 Grammy nominated bomb Odelay (which sold over two million copies) is no doubt tied to the fact that the Dust Brothers are once again behind the boards, for the first time since Odelay. Often referred to as "collage," Beck flexes his cut-and-paste knowledge of samples, including everything from The Beastie Boys to Claus Ogerman. But not only can he pull from the crate, he also plays too many instruments to list. Guero moves from the hashed-out, indie-rocker "E-Pro" to the Mexican street rap of "Que' Onda Guero" like the two were meant to co-habituate. Then there's Dance Party USA on a mild summer day with "Girl" dropping into "Missing" - a hopped-up bossa nova party on LSD, fully equipped with a swooning string section. But it's not all fun and games. While the music is mostly up-beat and jumpy, songs like "Broken Drum," "Scarecrow," and "Farewell Ride" are sparse, dark, atmospheric, and haunting.
Again balancing atop a musical and cultural high-wire, Beck is able to mix the overwhelming darkness of a post-9/11 mentality and the death of close friend Elliott Smith with the joys of having his first child. With Guero, we see the many parts of Beck, and we see him falling into a category few will ever touch.
Kayceman
JamBase | San Francisco
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