Beck – Guero (2005)
Interscope Records
13 tracks, 49.8 minutes
To be honest, I was a strange adolescent. Popular music didn’t do much for me; I’d always go out of my way to find strange records that didn’t appeal to the masses. Stumbling onto Beck Hansen’s then-new record Odelay was no coincidence. I’d seen him perform “Where It’s At” on Saturday Night Live, at first shrugging it off as a sort of bizarre novelty act. Later I found myself reciting “two turn tables and a microphone….” over and over in my head. After a while I became obsessed with Beck’s music. He seemed to speak directly to me in ways I couldn’t describe. I could pop Odelay into my crappy Sony boom box and be transported to a parallel dimension filled with Devil’s haircuts, hot dog dances in Houston, bottles and cans clapping their hands, strange invitations from jackasses, and wills written on three dollar bills. Since then, Beck’s music has matured along with me. He’s released soulful folk albums such as Mutations and Sea Change, and a funkadelic freak-out entitled Midnite Vultures. His tenth release, aptly named Guero, is not necessarily his best yet, but definitely up there.
Guero wastes no time, immediately kicking in with the abrasive junkyard rock of “E-Pro.” In “Que Onda Guero” (roughly translated to “What’s up, white boy?”), Beck sing-raps thorough his days growing up in an East Los Angeles barrio; backed by a beat straight out of a Cyprus Hill record complete with ambient sounds such as honking horns and guys shouting “Hey guero!” Arguably the best track on the record, “Girl” is as infectious as it is disturbing. Starting off with a simple 8-bit melody (an actual Game Boy sound chip was used); it quickly leads into a slide guitar-driven frenzy. By the time the pre-chorus rolls around, the song takes a plunge into the darker side of reality. Guero contains not one dull moment, keeping the listener intrigued until the very last second. “Hell Yes” is better than 90% of mainstream hip-hop out there, putting Usher’s “Yeah!” to shame. Toward the end of the record, we see tidbits of Beck’s more mellow side with “Farewell Ride” and “Emergency Exit,” both hauntingly reminiscent of some of his earliest work. Jack White of The White Stripes even makes an appearance playing bass guitar on the lazily downtrodden “Go It Alone.”
While Guero isn’t as textured as Odelay or Midnite Vultures, it retains the signature eclectic style and abstract Dylan-esque lyrics that Beck has perfected and reinvented time and time again. While Mr. Hansen is not quite as frenetic as he once was, he still continues to write amazingly original material that keeps you hooked. This is one of the best releases of 2005 thus far, containing a dynamic edge that allows it to rise above the MTV and Clear Channel wasteland.
– Zack Ghahramani
Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)