Mutations

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I get the sense that amongst critics and fans, Mutations is often considered Beck’s dress rehearsal for his 2002 heartbreaker Sea Change, trying sadness on for size before later going Full Desolation.

It is a question that has vexed philosophers, by which I mean people who perhaps overthink popular music, for 25 years now: Who is the real Beck? The original plan was that Bong Load Records, the tiny Los Angeles label that first released Beck’s breakout “Loser” would also release Mutations. The whole album feels slightly melancholy, which is no bad thing because it makes it more atmospheric, I gave it five stars because although it sounds derivative I think the production makes it original and unusual. genre this would fall into , maybe blues , folk perhaps some of it , I normally find genres a bit confusing perhaps Beck has one all his own, although his albums all seem different you can tell he's put a lot of work into this. Mutations is filled with dozens of tiny little Beckisms, choices only he would make, be it contrasting a wheezing harmonica with sci-fi synth wiggles on “Cold Brains,” undercutting the Beatles-like reverie of “We Live Again” with dread-inducing negative space or spicing his Brazilian-music homage “Tropicalia” with post-modern lyrics about isolation and a noisy sound collage.

The low end seems to be the added component, lending significant weight to an already excellent recording. Why should we think that writing songs about being horny and wanting to dance are any less valid than songs about watching your relationship fall apart? Or maybe Beck is telling you who he is every time he hits the microphone, and if he contradicts himself each time, if he’s telling you that he’s the heartbroken kid and also the goofy dad and also the sex freak and also the guy worried about the end of the world and also the guy who just wants to make you dance, then that’s how we know we can believe him. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

Beck had worked out an unprecedented deal with Geffen Records that would allow him, in theory, to release albums with smaller labels, which is how K Records was able to release his collection of early lo-fi recordings One Foot In The Grave and Flipside released his hodgepodge Stereopathetic Soulmanure the same year as Geffen released his official debut Mellow Gold. It is kind of fatalistic and yet somehow makes you feel that you can survive the dark times, almost as if you are observing them from the outside. But listening to Mutations today, I think what the album tells us is that even when he’s trying to be serious, Beck is still a playful guy. After the tour for Odelay wound down, Beck recruited Nigel Godrich for his major work after helming Radiohead’s OK Computer, the other huge era-defining alt-rock album of the late ’90s. He would follow that up with Sea Change, the Serious Album that many other people would consider his true masterpiece.Tout est dans le titre, on savait que l'album était bon au format CD, on sait maintenant que ce pressage vinyle (Geffen / Bong Load Records 2017) est superbe. The lyrics are also much more somber and serious than those on Odelay, apparent in the songs "Nobody's Fault but My Own" and "Dead Melodies".

Though less commercially successful than the preceding Odelay, it won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. So with Mutations — which turns 20 tomorrow — he made a hard pivot, setting aside his free-associative hip-hop sensibilities for a series of cosmic folk songs that saw him trading Irony for Feelings. Singles were released for the songs " Tropicalia", "Cold Brains" (Australia and New Zealand only), and "Nobody's Fault but My Own" (Japan only). It was a startling turn at the time, the effortlessly cool guy from “Where It’s At” asking aloud, “Pointing a finger, throw the book at you/ And who would want to dance with you?Beck and his crack live band cut a song a day for 14 days, for an off-the-cuff feel that Godrich would soak in his trademark antiseptic, Kubrikian sheen. Beck Hansen has had one of the most interesting and singular career arcs of any musician of his generation, and his sixth album, Mutations, marked a turning point in a catalog filled with turning points. There's an off-the-cuff wit to the songwriting, especially on Canceled Check and Bottle of Blues, and the performances are natural, relaxed, and laid-back, without ever sounding complacent.