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.

Hence, I definitely think this should be in your Beck collection and if you're more of a fan of Mellow Gold than his newer stuff you will definitely not be disappointed. 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. 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.It is possible that Beck knows when he sings in a strained falsetto about wanting to nail your sister, he knows he’ll get a laugh, and that he knows when he sings in a resigned lower register about feeling “unmoved, untouched, unglued” in “Cold Brains,” he knows he’ll get a sigh of recognition from anyone that has ever felt sad and unmoored (which is to say, anyone), and he’s a skillful enough performer that he knows how to hit both marks. The original plan was that Bong Load Records, the tiny Los Angeles label that first released Beck’s breakout “Loser” would also release Mutations. 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.

Every time I put this album on I definitely here something new, it seems to possess some sought of narrative.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. However, when Geffen executives heard the album, they reneged on their agreement and released the record. 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. 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.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Though less commercially successful than the preceding Odelay, it won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. The gulf between those two says a lot about Beck (and also about what some critics like to champion, but that’s a discussion for another day), but its also what makes him so hard to pin down. 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.The production style was very different from that of Beck's previous album Odelay, which was heavily influenced by hip hop music and contained many samples.

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.

I've recently set my phone to shuffle the entire Beck collection and while "Mutations" is not my favorite Beck album all the songs fit in seamlessly with the overall experience. Singles were released for the songs " Tropicalia", "Cold Brains" (Australia and New Zealand only), and "Nobody's Fault but My Own" (Japan only). It is blues-influenced and he sings moving lyrics about heart ache and the sadness of life, themes which fit his voice perfectly. Mutations would prove that Beck could do sincerity, or at least Sincerity, just fine thank you very much, and the woozy, operatic country rock he summons here in many ways feels like a blueprint that Mike Mogis and Conor Oberst would follow with Bright Eyes, where the slowly unraveling ballad “Static,” tucked all the way at the end of the album, feels like Beck’s big budget answer to the delicate balladry Cat Power and Elliott Smith were getting up to, declaring “it’s a perfect day to lock yourself inside” as the guitar solo shrugs and the keyboard lines evaporates. 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.