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beck the information full download free – Discography (1993 – 2014) Beck – Discography (1993 – 2014) EAC Rip | 41xCD | FLAC Tracks & Image + Cue + Log | Full Scans Included Total Size: 11.9 GB | 3% RAR Recovery STUDIO | SINGLES & EPs Label: Various | Genre: . Initially pegged as the voice of a generation when “Loser” turned into a smash crossover success, Beck wound up crystallizing much of the postmodern ruckus inherent in the ’90s alternative explosion, but in unexpected ways. Based in the underground anti-folk and noise-rock worlds, Beck encompassed all manner of modern music, drawing in hip-hop, , trash rock, pop, soul, lounge music — pretty much any found sound or vinyl dug up from a dusty crate — blurring boundaries and encapsulating how ’90s hipsters looked toward the future by foraging through the past. In another time, Beck may have stayed in the province of the underground, but he surfaced just as alternative rock turned mainstream, with his 1994 debut launching “Loser,” a hit that crossed over with the velocity of a novelty, a notion Beck quickly punctured with a succession of indie LPs delivered in the wake of Mellow Gold, including the lo-fi folk of One Foot in the Grave, delivered on the K imprint. But the album that truly cemented Beck’s place in the pantheon was 1996’s , a co-production with the that touched upon all of his obsessions, providing a cultural keystone for the decade while telegraphing all his future moves, from the soul prankster of to the melancholy troubadour of Sea Change. ― Allmusic. 1. STUDIO: 1993. Golden Feelings (1999, Sony Enemy, SE 002, USA) 1994. Mellow Gold (2012, Universal, UICY-25176, Japan, SHM-CD) 1994. One Foot in the Grave (1994, K, KLP 28, USA) 1994. Stereopathetic Soulmanure (1994, Flipside, FLIP60, USA) 1996. Odelay (2012, Universal, UICY-25177, Japan, SHM-CD) 1998. Mutations (1998, DGC, DGCD-25309, USA) 1998. Mutations (2012, Universal, UICY-25178, Japan, SHM-CD) 1999. Midnite Vultures (1999, DGC, 0694904852, USA) 1999. Midnite Vultures (2012, Universal, UICY-25179, Japan, SHM-CD) 2002. Sea Change (2012, Universal, UICY-25180, Japan, SHM-CD) 2005. (2012, Universal, UICY-25181, Japan, SHM-CD) 2006. The Information (2006, , B0007601-00, USA, CD+DVD) 2008. (2008, DGC Records, B001150702, Canada) 2014. (2014, Capitol, B001983802, USA) 2. SINGLES & EPs: 1994. Beercan (1994, DGC, DGCDM-22000, USA) 1994. Loser (1994, DGC, DGCDM-21930, USA) 1994. Loser (1994, Geffen, GFSTD 67, UK) 1996. Devil’s Haircut (1996, Geffen, GFSXD 22183, UK) 1996. Where It’s At (1996, Geffen, GFSTD22156, UK) 1996. Where It’s At (1996, MCA Victor, MVCG-15001, Japan) 1997. Deadweight (1997, Geffen, GFSTD 22293, UK) 1997. Jack-Ass (1997, Geffen, GFSTD 22276, UK) 1997. (1997, Geffen, GFSTD 22253, UK) 1997. CD1 (1997, Geffen, GFSTD22205, UK) 1997. The New Pollution CD2 (1997, Geffen, GFSXD 22205, UK) 1998. (1998, Geffen, INTDM-97093, Australia) 1998. The Mutations Conversations (1998, DGC, PRO-CD-1235, USA, Promo) 1998. Tropicalia (1998, Geffen, GED 22365, UK) 1999. CD1 (2000, Geffen, 497 300-2, EU, Enhanced CD) 1999. Mixed Bizness CD2 (2000, Geffen, 497 301-2, EU, Enhanced CD) 1999. Nobody’s Fault But My Own (1999, Universal Victor, MVCF-12015, Japan) 1999. CD1 (1999, Geffen, 497 181-2, UK) 1999. Sexx Laws CD2 (1999, Geffen, 497 182-2, UK) 2000. Nicotine & Gravy (2000, Geffen, 497 389-2, EU, Enhanced CD) 2005. E-Pro (2005, Interscope Records, 00602498800522, EU) If you encounter broken links or other problem about this publication, please let me know and write your comment below. I will reply and fix as soon as possible. The Information [Deluxe Edition] Beck began work on 2006's The Information after Sea Change but before he reunited with the Dust Brothers for 2005's Guero, eventually finishing the album after Guero was generally acclaimed as a return to Odelay form. So, it shouldn't come as a great surprise that The Information falls somewhere between those two records, at least on sonic terms. Musically, it's certainly a kindred spirit to Guero, meaning that it hearkens back to the collage of loose-limbed, quirky white-boy funk-rock and rap that brought Beck fame at the peak of the alt-rock revolution, with hints of the psychedelia of Mutations and the folk-rock that was the basis for Sea Change. Since this is a production, it's meticulous and precise even when it wants to give the illusion of spontaneity, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, since it also pulls the album into focus, something that the generally fine Guero could have used. Guero had many strengths, but its biggest weakness was the general sense that it was unfinished, a suspicion fostered by its endless issues in deluxe editions and remixes. Beck embraced these changes, most extravagantly on the cover of Wired, where he was hailing the future of the album, which would now no longer be seen as finished: it would be a project that covered a certain amount of time, the artist would package it one way, then listeners would offer their own spin. That is precisely what Guero turned out to be, so it would have made sense that The Information would run further down that field, particularly because it has a design-your-own-art for its cover and is supplemented by a DVD filled with quick-n-dirty videos for each of its songs. But Beck isn't so easily pigeonholed: as it turns out, The Information is far more of a proper album than Guero, coming fully equipped with recurring themes and motifs, feeling every bit album Sea Change was. Credit might go partially to his collaboration with Godrich -- who is nothing if not a taskmaster, helping to sharpen and focus erratic talents like Paul McCartney and Stephen Malkmus (for good in the former, not as good in the latter) -- but this also feels like the work of a refocused Beck, who shook off the cobwebs by reuniting with the Dust Brothers, thereby getting his "return to Odelay form" notices out of the way, and then getting down to the real work here on The Information, as he tackles the hyper-saturated info-world of the new millennium here. If it initially seems like surprises are in short supply on The Information -- even when the tracks take a left turn, it doesn't feel like Beck and Godrich are wandering off the map -- the craft is strong and assured, and closer listens reveal the depth of the detail within the album, whether it's in the construction of the production or how those productions illuminate Beck's themes. Ever the obscurist, Beck's meanings aren't always crystal clear, which is no doubt deliberate, but his overall intent is easier to ascertain, especially when "Cellphone's Dead" juts up against "Nausea." There's a greater sense of craft here, and while craft isn't necessarily the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about Beck, it's what happens when an eccentric sticks around for over a decade: he turns pro. He's done his exploring and now he's learning how to apply what he's discovered. While this may have the inevitable side effect of making his music a little less bracing and exciting, at least on first listen -- and that's especially true when he's in his pop chameleon mode as he is here, since it often seemed like his collages were quickly thrown together instead of immaculately assembled as they are here -- it nevertheless makes for a well-constructed, intriguing, and satisfying album, which The Information assuredly is. Upon first listen, it might seem to slide by a little bit on texture and sound instead of song, but that doesn't necessarily mean it feels even as groove- oriented and hip-hop-driven as Guero (let alone Midnite Vultures), despite the fact that many of the best tracks are built on muscular, intricate rhythms, like the dense, paranoid "Nausea" or the opening fanfare of "Elevator Music." But those further listens -- something that a neo-concept album like this demands anyway -- reveal the complexity within the productions, and how Beck is bridging the two sides of his personality, finding a common ground between his folk roots and art rock sides. All those little details give each cut a dramatic flow, and as the cuts pile up, they all add up to something. Like a picture where you have to stare intently to find the hidden item buried in a seas of colored dots, it can be far too easy on The Information to look at the individual dots and not see the big picture -- but at least here the dots are interesting in and of themselves. And if you give it time, The Information eventually reveals itself as Beck's tightest, most purposeful album yet. [The 2007 Deluxe Edition includes bonus tracks.] Beck the information full album download free. "Best Buy" music stores special edition. Includes download card for a bonus track, "This Girl That I Know." Recorded at Ocean Way Studios, Conway Studios, Sound Isadore & Beck's Garage (Los Angeles, CA), winter 03 to spring 06. Mastered at Gateway Mastering (Portland, ME). 'Stickers inside' (includes one of 4 different sets available). DVD consists of videos for each track. Tracks 3 and 12 feature alternate angles to select while watching. New Beck Album The Information : First Listen. The Information album will be coming with stickers so that fans can make their own cover. I’ve been a fan of Beck dating back to first hearing “Loser” in 1994. To get an idea of where I stand on prior Beck releases I think Odelay and Sea Changes are probably his best two albums partly because of how different they are from each other. They are both excellent but in totally different ways. That being said I’m also a big fan of Mellow Gold, Midnite Vultures, and Guero. I also find his early work like Stereopathic Soulmanure quite interesting. I know you’re asking “Where’s Mutations?” For whatever reason I’ve never been able to get into that album. I know it’s many Beck fans favorites. I think the songs on it are good enough but they all sort of strike me as the songs on a Beck album that aren’t as interesting as the really goood ones all collected onto one album. I know that’s a very unpopular opinion to have, but hey, there it is. So for those who haven’t already completely invalidated my opinion due to my feelings on Mutations, here’s my first impression of the new Beck album “The Information.” which like Sea Changes is produced by Nigel Godrich who is most well known with his work with (see also Thom Yorke’s new album, Travis, and Paul McCartney’s “Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.”) 1. Elevator Music – Loving the “one two you know what to do” intro. There’s a looser and funkier feel to the this than on anything on the somewhat underwhelming Guero (mostly because of it’s similarities to Beck’s prior work making it not feel as fresh, I still feel it’s a fine album.) I’m really liking the production on this track with the spacy reverb being used to create very interesting sonic textures. 2. Think I’m In Love – The drum and bass here is really killer. Reminds me of some of my favorite moments of Stereolab. This is a track that really goes into some different territory but the segues from genre to genre seem pretty natural. It sort of feels like a journey through the different styles he’s experimented with before. I can see now how this sentence could be taken as a negative thing or a positive, I mean it actually in a positive way. The song really smoothly goes into these different styles/feelings and each seems perfectly realized. 3. Cellphone’s Dead – This one reminds me most of Midnite Vultures but the feeling is a bit more organic here. The song goes from sounding very sort of MTV raps (or whatever they play on MTV now a days.) to being very sort of strangely peaceful towards the end. 4. Strange Apparition – Really dense (there’s a lot going on and a busy beat.) country pop. I think this is an interesting track almost precisely because there seems to be too much going on. Most of the time this sort of track would be done in a more straight forward way but Beck seems to be going for hyperactive combined with a sort of Rolling Stones “Wild Horses” vibe. There’s really some quite stunning changes in this song. One second things are very upbeat and poppy in this strange chaotic way and then the next moment you feel like you are listening to this sort of beautiful ballad. Really nice. Hard to get across. I must say though, I’m loving this album. 5. Soldier Jane – Soft synths and spacey atmosphere underpin a catchy song that while fast still has an introspective sound to the vocals and feeling to the overall music. Again the production on this song (as with the previous songs) is extremely interesting. 6. Nausea – Beck’s voice on this track reminds me a lot of Thom Yorke’s delivery on recent Radiohead material. Actually to the point where I really think he’s “doing Thom Yorke” vocally on this track. The ear candy in this album is really stunning me at the moment. First impression is I’m really just floored by the energy and the sounds I’m hearing. Great Stuff. 7. New Round – Really nice combination of the ol’ funky drums and soft acoustics and really pretty vocals by Beck, the harmonies on this track really kick my shins in. 8. Dark Star – Beck and Godrich really outdo themselves with the textures in this song. It’s sort of like an interstellar version of a Sea Change track. There is extremely tripped out stuff happening throughout this album. 9. We Dance Alone – Combines synths with what sounds like someone rubbing a stick against the floor. The vocals again remind me of recent Thom Yorke. This track doesn’t seem quite as inspired as the first 8 tracks to me at the moment. Gets a bit repetitious which I found to be the biggest problem with Guero on repeat listens, that along with just being too long, with this album at 15 tracks I’m concerned that’s going to be the case with this one as well. 10. No Complaints – While this song seems similarly repetitious as the last it gets away with it just by being catchier and a lot of fun. Sort of a catchy clap your hands sing along with plenty of weird sounds and really pretty harmonies again. This track is just 2:59. 11. 1000 BPM – This is some really crazy stuff. It’s like Stereopathic Soul Manure era Beck getting a hold on all of 2006 Beck’s toys and just going mad with it. This is the highlight of the album to me so far because it sounds just absolutely insane. This song is very “hip hop” but it’s got so much more imagination than anything you’ll hear on the pop hip hop radio. Great, Great track. 12. Motorcade – The album seems to making a real turn for the bizarre and I really am appreciating that at the moment. This track is a very strange combination of sounds. At about two minutes things really go insane. This is the kind of exciting music I’ve been wanting to hear from Beck again since Odelay. By that I mean it doesn’t sound like Odelay but it sounds as fresh to my ears now as Odelay did then. This track is just exactly what I need to be hearing right now. This is absolutely tripped out awesome music. 13. The Information – The title track sticks to the weird. And I love it. The amount of awesome stuff going on sonically in this album is just mind numbing. I mean there was ear candy in Guero too but it all felt like things I’d heard before done again. Here I really feel like I’m hearing some amazing ingenious stuff going on with the sonic textures. This music is extremely psychedelic. I think this is Beck’s trippiest album of his career and that’s saying quite a bit in my opinion. The spooky backing voices in this track are what really make it. 14. Movie Theme – This is probably the most Air (the French band.) like track I’ve heard Beck do. It’s definitely keeping the spaced out feeling of the past few tracks continuing on. I was really loving the album through the first 10 songs but now it’s just turning classic on me. I’m really floored by this album the most I’ve been on a first listen in quite awhile. 15. The Horrible Fanfare, Landslide, Exoskeleton – This album is 61 minutes and this track is over 10 minutes. I’m really a fan of an album more in the 40 minute territory just how I like it as a general rule of thumb. My initial reaction is this album almost pulls off this long length but I’m not quite sure yet. I am pretty sure that it’d be a tighter album if some of the fat could be cut and get it down to 45 minutes. I don’t really mean any of the spacey sections because those are my favorite bits really, I mean maybe track 9? I don’t know, none of the songs are bad and I can see why they are all included. Anyway I’ve gone off topic but that’s partly because I think this topic is too big to be written about properly, at least by me, at least at this point. This song dives into complete spook out territory. I hate to bring up another Thom Yorke comparison but this track reminds me a lot of Yorke’s “The Erasure” but it is probably weirder than anything on that album. It’s freaking me out a bit at the moment. Seriously this is insane. Perhaps one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever heard on a “pop” record. And I think it may have something to do with Scientology. Overall Final Impression : I may have a new favorite album of 2006 (Current is Thom Yorke’s The Erasure) This album sounds very fresh, very daring, very exciting. This is music meant to get into your head and make you really feel something and that’s exciting to me. For people who really love listening to music and letting it take over their world this is a treasure. The last third of the album is some of the most out there music I’ve heard in a long time. Wonderful. I’m looking forward to hearing this album again. A Guide to Beck’s Most Essential Albums for His 50th Birthday. More than any artist this side of John Lennon, Beck understands the vital role of nonsense in music. “There’s power in [songs] being non- profound, throwaway,” he explained to The Guardian in 2017. “They can exist beyond the artist, beyond the genre, beyond the era. They float.” “People talk about comedy being harder to pull off than drama,” he mused to The New Yorker two years later. “How do you make something levitate?” Beck’s greatest albums are both comedic and dramatic, sailing over previous notions of common sense. On 1996’s Odelay , he rifled through the junk-drawer of music’s past and assembled futuristic pop from its disused pieces. His devastating 2002 breakup album, Sea Change , and its atmospheric 2014 companion, Morning Phase , exude the feeling of gliding above a cloud cover. On his 2019 album, Hyperspace , he identified the vaporous space between pop’s past and present with the aid of Pharrell Williams. Despite his still-elfin features and unchanged voice, Beck ages like the rest of us. On July 8, the guitar-toter, puppet-dancer, and experimental tinkerer, who has given the world hangdog ballads, outlandish raps, and gutter blues, turns 50 years young. His bulletproof career was never a given. “If you ask anyone that knows me, they’d tell you I’ve had the worst fucking luck,” Beck told Spin in 1994. “This is all an avalanche of confetti and balloons and kazoos. Before, the party was just an empty room with a bare light bulb on the ceiling.” The Angeleno son of a bluegrass musician father and a mother who hung out at Andy Warhol’s Factory, Beck quit school in the ninth grade and busked Mississippi John Hurt songs on city buses. “Some drunk would start yelling at me, calling me Axl Rose,” he told in 1994. So he took a different tack and freestyled over the chords: “I’d start singing about Axl Rose and the levee and bus passes and strychnine, mixing the whole thing up.” At 17, he bought a one-way ticket from Los Angeles to New York “It was the whole cliché,” he told Rolling Stone . “[I] went on a fucking bus. I had, like, $8 in my pocket like a total idiot with a guitar and nothing else.” Beck soaked up the East Village anti-folk scene and rode home a year later. While opening acts broke down their gear at L.A. clubs, he clambered onstage with his acoustic guitar. “I would always sing my goofy stuff because everybody was drunk, and I’d only have two minutes,” he said. “That was my whole shot.” His shot paid off in 1990 when Bong Load Records’ founder happened to be part of Beck’s captive audience. “I went to Jabberjaw in L.A. one summer day, and in between bands this guy bum-rushed the stage with a jazzercise sticker on his acoustic guitar,” Rothrock told Billboard in 2019. “I was blown away.” After making his way to the towheaded stage-crasher and discovering he loved Lead Belly as much as Public Enemy, he and co-producers and Karl Stephenson asked to work with him, and the four of them brought “Loser” to life. Beck resented the “slacker” image that “Loser” pinned on him, despite it being a titanic MTV hit. “I never had any slack,” he told Rolling Stone . “A year ago, I was living in a shed behind a house with a bunch of rats, next to an alley downtown.” But the album it belonged to, 1994’s Mellow Gold , became a platinum hit, setting the stage for decades of alt-rock classics like 1996’s Odelay . In 2014, he completed his arc from a shed tenant to a household name when Morning Phase won him a Grammy for Album of the Year. If Beck’s wildly divergent discography might make one feel alone in the new pollution, Discogs is here to cast a lifeline. To ring in his 50th year, here’s our guide to getting into Beck. Where to Start. Odelay (1996) When “Loser” hit mainstream culture, Beck felt the new audience he accrued didn’t comprehend his craft. “It totally disturbed me,” he told Rolling Stone in 1997. “It didn’t seem like people understood what I was doing. It was like, ‘Is this guy for real? Is he making music that’s worthy or valuable?’ I felt like I was constantly having to prove myself.” What he needed was a cohesive, classic album. 1994’s Mellow Gold , which kicks off with “Loser,” had all the ingredients for greatness scattered on the table, but they didn’t add up to a front-to-back experience. Luckily, he found facilitators E.Z. Mike and King Gizmo, a.k.a. the Dust Brothers, who had produced visionary sample-based albums like the ’ Paul’s Boutique and Tone-Lōc’s Lōc-ed After Dark . Beck had been pigeonholed as a one-hit-wonder, so the pressure was off. “It was great to make a record with nobody looking over our shoulders, nobody anticipating what we were going to do, so we were freed up,” E.Z. Mike told MusicRadar in 2011. “Even the record company was like, ‘Yeah, cool. Let us know when it’s done.’” Left to their own devices, the three plundered old records. Several ideas were plucked from Them’s 1966 record Them Again ; the surf-tinged “” featured a borrowed riff from “I Can Only Give You Everything” and the gorgeous ballad “Jack-Ass” sampled their cover of Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” The club-ready “Where It’s At” — the one that contains his unofficial slogan “Got two turntables and a microphone!” — was hung on a sample from a middle-school sex-ed record. Despite its kooky range of source material, Odelay flows from beginning to end, its livewire experimentation tempered by endless post-production on primitive software. “When we met Beck, it was like kids messing around in a playground playing with popsicle sticks or whatever to create something with no agenda,” E.Z. Mike told KEXP in 2015. Sampling law might have been a worthwhile agenda to heed, but if they did, Odelay would be unrecognizable. Nearly 25 years after its release, Odelay still provides hours of entertainment and remains the first Beck album one should spring for. Midnite Vultures (1999) “A party record with dumb sounds and dumb songs and dumb lyrics” is how Beck described his final album of the 1990s. If this description elicits Raditude -shaped nightmares, think again. Midnite Vultures is a parody of disco-era lechery pulled off so well that it became one of Beck’s greatest achievements. Despite being 10 years old when the 1970s ended, Beck is a scholar of the decade; the biblically horny Midnite Vultures is lousy with wah-wah effects, blaxploitation horns, and stuttering clavinets. The funk-band format fed the artist’s absurdist muse; “Beck would present us with a new song literally every day,” keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning, Jr. of Jellyfish told Spin in 1999. “I’ve never worked so hard in my life.” “This point in time seems more power-oriented. Power workout, power diet, power body parts, power relationships, power steering, Power Rangers,” Beck noted to Spin. Likewise, the sex-crazed suburbanites of Midnite Vultures get botox injections, flirt at department stores, and hook up in the backseats of convertibles. “I’m mixing business with leather!” he crows on two different songs. Every second of Midnite Vultures is saturated with sound — a fretless bass moan, a swanky Vegas fanfare, a -like falsetto. It all filthily crescendos with “Debra,” in which the sight of a JCPenney employee sends Beck into hormonal conniptions. (The song was left off Odelay for being — get this — too goofy.) Morning Phase (2014) A gossamer singer- record, Morning Phase hardly seems like it was made on the planet as Midnite Vultures , let alone by the same artist. “The record’s pretty slow. I think at one point we realized there was nothing faster than 60 [beats per minute],” Beck told NPR in 2014. “That’s really slow.” Morning Phase was a belated continuation of Sea Change , his acclaimed first crack at a sophisticated singer-songwriter record. Soon after that record, he sketched out a sequel on a series of tapes only to have them stolen from a venue. “That was really heartbreaking to me,” he told The Quietus in 2014, and he shunned acoustic guitars for years, returning to hip-hop and electronic influences for the remainder of the decade. When the time was right, Beck returned to Morning Phase with a number of the Sea Change musicians, including guitarist , bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen, and drummer . A spinal injury that had reduced his voice to a whisper on 2008’s Modern Guilt had cleared up. “These songs were about … how things do get better,” he told Rolling Stone in 2013. “I get to shout and yell. I’m like, ‘Thank you!’” His voice rejuvenated, Beck enters the album sounding like a god. “Woke up this morning,” he booms with hushed majesty, the “ing” leaving a vapor trail of reverb. Acoustic-based songs like “Say Goodbye,” “Blue Moon,” and “Blackbird Chain” feel weighty and metamorphic a la George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass . Everyone knows that sequels can be shaky propositions, but Morning Phase is mightier and more moving than its predecessor. It won a Grammy for Album of the Year in 2015, beating Ed Sheeran’s + and Beyoncé’s self-titled album. Going Deeper. Mellow Gold (1994) During the gold rush for post-Nirvana alternative freaks, DGC Records made an unorthodox deal with Beck — he could make Mellow Gold any way he wanted, and even put out indie releases on the side. So he expanded the junkyard aesthetic of “Loser” to the length of an album. “The whole concept of Mellow Gold is that it’s like a satanic K-Tel record that’s been found in a trash dumpster,” he explained to Rolling Stone in 1994. “A few people have molested it and slept with it and half-swallowed it before spitting it out. Someone played poker with it, someone tried to smoke it. Then the record was taken to Morocco and covered with hummus and tabouli.” After you-know-what-single kicks it off, a pitch-shifted voice reports on “ (Snoozer): “This is song two on the album, This is the album right here. Burn the album.” Indeed, the remainder of Mellow Gold feels like a charred coda to “Loser,” leaving the innards of that song on the operating table for all to see. Despite a few tracks that really work, like “Fuckin With My Head (Mountain Dew Rock)”, “Soul Suckin’ Jerk” and “Nitemare Hippy Girl,” Mellow Gold mostly sounds like Beavis and Butt-Head cacophonously flipping through channels. That said, Mellow Gold works as a scuzzier version of what Beck achieved on Odelay . If that’s what you’re in the mood for, may this analog odyssey serve you well. Mutations (1998) After the Odelay tour, Beck was eager to revisit songs that had fallen behind the stove. “I scared up a bunch of songs I had sitting around,” he told Rolling Stone in 1998. “I had a lot of songs that were a little more contemplative, quiet, and folky. Some of them I tried to record for Odelay , and they just didn’t pan out.” Bare and spacious with an unobtrusive tint of psychedelia and bossa nova, Mutations was a refreshing break from Beck’s caffeinated previous work. It also marks the beginning of his long, fruitful partnership with Nigel Godrich, who had produced Radiohead’s OK Computer the previous year. “Nigel was supposed to go on vacation … then he suddenly called and said ‘I’ll blow it off. I have 14 days. We’ll just go in and do it,’” Beck recalled. “We decided we’d do a song a day, record and mix. No looking back. No doctoring anything. And it turned out to be the album as you hear it.” Without screeching turntables or gang-vocals fighting for attention, “Nobody’s Fault But My Own,” “Canceled Check,” and “Sing It Again” are like a welcome blast of air conditioning. Despite the lack of a striking single at its core, Mutations is lovely both on its own terms and as a harbinger of Sea Change . Sea Change (2002) Beck had just broken up with his girlfriend when he made Sea Change . So had Nigel Godrich. “He was really devastated and heartbroken, too,” Beck told The Guardian in 2017. “We were making the record together in that sense.” Three years prior, the songwriter learned that fashion designer Leigh Limon, who he’d dated for nine years, was cheating on him. To process the event, he wrote 12 bereft songs in the vein of Hank Williams or Nick Drake, shelved them for a time, then decided to put them out. “They’re honest and simple songs and they’re trying to capture a universal experience that anybody goes through,” Beck told MTV at the time. “It’s taking something sad and trying to turn it into something that’s hopeful at the end.” The first thing Godrich noted during the sessions: Beck’s voice had become a force of nature. “Before we recorded, we listened to Mutations , and his voice sounded like Mickey Mouse. His range has dropped,” he told Time in 2002. “Now when he opens his mouth, a canyonesque vibration comes out.” This newfound sonorousness sells tracks like “Guess I’m Doing Fine,” “It’s All in Your Mind” (which was originally recorded for 1994’s One Foot in the Grave ), and “Lost Cause,” all statements of romantic sorrow graspable by anyone with a pulse. The Deep End. One Foot in the Grave (1994) Mississippi John Hurt is a crucial part of Beck’s mythos. “I’d never heard anything like that,” Beck told Rolling Stone of discovering the singer- songwriter early on. “This wasn’t some hippie guy fingerpicking in the ’70s, singing about rainbows. This was the real stuff.” He spent half a year in his bedroom working out Hurt’s fingerpicking patterns. One Foot in the Grave doesn’t contain any songs by the Southern bluesman, but his presence still looms large. Recorded prior to Mellow Gold and released after that album blew up, the lo-fi folk album mixes originals (“Sleeping Bag,” “Hollow Log”) with spirituals (“Fourteen Rivers Fourteen Floods,” which borrows elements from “You’ve Gotta Move”), and blues standards (Skip James’ “He’s a Mighty Good Leader”). Beck recorded the album in Calvin Johnson’s basement studio Dub Narcotic with members of Built to Spill, Love as Laughter, and the Presidents of the United States of America as his band. “I always think of One Foot in the Grave as a pencil sketch,” he told CMJ New Music Monthly in 1998, a description that still holds, but it’s valuable as a display of the artist’s raw talent sans bells and whistles. Guero (2005) Beck spent his teenage years in an El Salvadoran neighborhood just outside of Koreatown. When he attempted to learn Spanish, “They’d just be crying, in hysterics,” he told The New Yorker of his classmates, who teased him with a Chicano slang word meaning “white boy.” “‘Oh my god, who is this guero?’ So I just shut up.” In 2005, Beck released Guero , a revisitation of the Odelay vibe featuring the Dust Brothers. The sorta-title-track “Qué Onda Guero” (or ‘What’s up, white boy?’) features sights he grew up with — prayer candles, mango ladies, men sleeping outdoors wearing Burger King crowns. “My reality of L.A. was quite different from Baywatch ,” he said. “It was just the world that I knew.” Despite a handful of strong songs like “Girl,” “Hell Yes,” and “Scarecrow,” and guest appearances from and Petra Haden, Guero only partially captures the magic of Odelay . (Not being able to sample anything with impunity may have contributed to this.) But if you’re craving a part-two to that album in the way that Morning Phase connects to Sea Change , it’ll do in a pinch. Hyperspace (2019) Unfortunately, few Beck albums post- Guero hold a candle to his early work; 2006’s The Information is too sterile, 2008’s Modern Guilt is too listless, and 2017’s Colors sounds like a dozen other electro-pop albums by other artists. For Hyperspace , he chose to take a different tack. “I really tried to be less ambitious on the production on these songs — to let them be simple and let them breathe,” he told NME in 2019. “Pharrell is a master minimalist. On production I’m a bit of a maximalist — I’m known to have 140 tracks of things trying to coexist and try to be heard at the same time.” Where Colors tried too hard to be part of the modern pop landscape and ended up a tad bloated, Hyperspace ’s empty spaces serve as a relief. And guests like Sky Ferriera (“Die Waiting”) and Coldplay’s (“Stratosphere”) save things from getting too samey. “A lot of my albums, there aren’t many guests,” Beck said. “I’m in there 12 hours a day just trudging through this production, so it’s a great joy to bring people I know into my music.” Hyperspace was created during another breakup, this time, his divorce from Marissa Ribisi, his wife of 15 years. Despite a despondent tune or two like “” and “Dark Places,” this traumatic event didn’t seem to affect the songwriting process. “I started to fall into this structure that each song was a different person, a portrait of a person in a mood of life,” he told The Independent in 2019. “Each person in the songs was trying to find some way in their life to grapple with the world, their lives, and their past.” With Hyperspace , Beck seems primed to continue as a prestige artist into the 2020s — one day, he’s an acoustic troubadour, another day, he’s a robot-funk prankster. And Beck has never seemed as confident in either role as he does at 50. He’s cleaning the floor. His beat is correct.

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