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(May 9, 2005)
Beck: Guero
Rating - ***
The Beck page
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Reviewing a Beck CD is tricky business. There are several inherent
risks - you might fall asleep halfway through it; you might get
depressed and swallow poison before you have a chance to fall asleep;
or you might go crazy and actually start thinking that Beck's music
is great. And even if you should make it all the way through and avoid
all of these pitfalls, you still are left with a mood that is roughly
halfway between (i) the feeling of realizing that you have just eaten
slightly tainted seafood, and (ii) the feeling of finding yourself with
a beer buzz in a strange town so early in the afternoon of a hot day
that the hotel staff doesn't have your room ready for you yet.
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Yes, it's a tough job alright, but somebody has to do it, and here's what
I have to report: Beck's new release Güero is definitely worth adding
to your music library. Now, in case you are thinking that I'm putting
the double-dot over the "u" in the title just to punish the webmaster for
something he did in a previous lifetime, let me assure you that I've long
been familiar with the G-word, having wasted a good deal of my life travelling
in Mexico and getting called that particular name quite a bit. If it's
missing the double-dot, the g is no longer silent, and it becomes a nonsense
word. In any case, it's not really a slur - it just means "blondie" or
"paleface." They tend to say it affectionately. And the song "Quéonda Güero"
really captures the experience of being a white boy and walking down the street
in some Mexican border town. This song is Beck at his humorous best. Lyrics
like "Andale joto, your popsicle's dripping..." ... the description of the
abuelitas walking to church with their plastic bags .. the vegetable van with
the horn blaring like a mariachi band...great stuff.
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This song is an excellent example of the Beck device that I call the
"Loser Clone." Every Beck album except for Sea Change has had at
least one, and this one is the best yet. It's good and commercially viable
at the same time. "Hell Yes" is another Loser Clone that doesn't work so
well. Then there's generous helping of White Rap that you've come
to expect from Beck - examples are "E-Pro," "Scarecrow," and "Go it Alone." And
of course, what would a Beck album be without a couple of mournfully
slow, elegiac dirges like "Missing" and "Earthquake Weather"? This is all
recycled stuff. It was interesting 10 years ago but it's getting kind of
tiresome now, like this review. (Take this review as a test. If you fall
asleep before you get to the end of it, you'll NEVER make it through Güero.)
But you should try to make it through, because sure enough, hidden
in the midst of all this world-weariness, are two absolute gems. The
first, "Broken Drum," is a song that you'll hear once and never
forget. It's slow, yet incredibly, hauntingly, beautiful. (It could
easily be an outtake from Beck's 2002 release Sea Change.) The second
is a funeral march by the name of "Farewell Ride" - while Kurt Cobain leaves
upbeat suicide notes like "Serve the Servants," Beck wants to pull us
down with him into an early grave with a single beating drum, and these lyrics:
Two white horses in a line carrying me to my burying ground.
Some need diamonds, some need love, some need cards, some need luck
Some need dollar bills lining their clothes
All I need is all I need is two white horses in a line
taking me for my farewell ride.
What's this?! Beck is getting suicidal? Whatever could be the cause? Did
he get trapped in a room and have to listen to a lethal dose of his own
music? I think a more logical explanation is that Beck, like so many of us,
has spent his life looking for something and he's realizing now that he'll
never find it. Hopefully, he'll get over it, because the music world would
be an emptier place without him. Having said all that, it would be a stretch
to say that his music is anything that could be considered "enjoyable."
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