A review of Beck's "Colors"

All right, I'm going to get weird here for a moment. I do not consider myself a conspiracy theorist, but since the direction of Beck's follow up to Morning Phase has slowly come to light over the past three years, I have developed what one might call a "conspiracy theory"*...and here it is...

After Beck won the Grammy in 2015 and was rewarded by Kayne's cuntishness and a legion of ill-informed children tweeting #WhoIsBeck, I believe he had a thought. I believe his thought was to make an album so accessible and so mainstream as to show these twenty-somethings exactly who he was and what he was capable of. He sat down and looked at what he had lying around** and saw a bunch of stuff he did with super-mainstream, finger-on-the-pulse producer and former keyboardist, Greg Kurstin. This stuff was as far from the somber beauty of Morning Phase as Beck had been perhaps since 1999's Midnite Vultures and it was accessible as fuck. The plan started there.
Beck went on to make songs as commercial and radio-friendly as he was able, dusting them with just a hint of the funk and weirdness he is so adept at, but not too much funk or weirdness, got to keep this appealing to the masses, always think of the masses. If Morning Phase was the spiritual sequel to 2002's Sea Change, a complete work for musicians and people who loved intricate and challenging music that pays dividends after repeat listens, then this new one was going to be for the Playlist People, the Shuffleheads, those who like songs but not albums because who has forty minutes to listen to anything? To someone in their twenties, forty minutes is the equivalent of four hundred years. That is a fact created by combining math and science.***
At one point, and here's where things get uber-conspiratorial, Beck decides to not just make an album for the kids, he decides to mock them a little by lampooning the music and subjects they're used to. Proof?**** The first single, "Dreams". The song actually features the Millennial Whoop. And those lyrics...so...normal...
As time went on, the songs got more and more overproduced, and less and less substantial. He removed continuity and flow from the album, and came out with ten candy-coated frosting dots that were designed to appeal to the most brainless and least focused demographics: Millennials and the corporations that shill for Millennials.*****

Now, do I actually believe all this? Eh, no. In a nutshell; I think the direction and content of the album as well as the decision to release Colors after Morning Phase was influenced by the fact that the overwhelming response to a skilled artist winning one of the music industry's highest awards****** resulted in the majority of the public asking "who's this guy who is almost 50 and who we've never heard of who just beat Beyonce for the best album released in the entirety of 2014. I don't care if you're a time-travelling space alien like Beck, that's got to get through, and it's got to sting, at least a bit.

I should probably review this thing, huh?

Colors is an album made of and for the zeitgeist. Sadly, while the zeitgeist can be colorful, it can also be hyperactive and vapid. From start to finish, the album is rife with the same overused and mundane concepts and assertions that've plagued the music industry since its inception. "Put it up in the air / if you don't really care", "just wanna stay up all night with you / nothing that I wouldn't rather do", "it's my life, your life / live it once, can't live it twice"*******, "what I need is right in front of me", and so on. Here's the thing though, even if 90% of the lyrics here are just fluff, a lot of the songs are catchy, if not good.
I don't hate this album. I hate...what it is and why it is, the need for it and the music it reflects and mimics. There are good, well-crafted, pop-as-fuck songs here. "Dreams" (the original, not the blander album mix) and "Up All Night" should be on every summer mix tape for at least the next five years, "Dear Life" is solid and would fit nicely on other, better Beck albums, "Square One" and"Wow" are fun (but the latter isn't nearly as weird as seemingly every other review claims it is. There's one "weird" line in it and that accounts for five seconds of a forty five minute album. Fucking get over it and make sure you don't listen to Midnite Vultures or your heads will explode), and "I'm So Free" needs to be on the radio forever.
And hey, if Beck wants to make an album where every song is crafted to be purchased by movie studios or car companies and featured in commercials or trailers or bland CW dramas, who am I to get mad when he does? He's got kids and, apparently, musical genius and Grammy awards don't pay for college. Going from there, as I was listening to Colors for the first time, I could actually see the commercials in which each song would be used and took notes. 

"Colors" - iPhone 8 Color announce or new Canon printer, something where they're trying to sell the idea of "color" as a new invention or product

"Seventh Heaven" -  CW teen drama prom dance song as credits roll; our introverted hero just found out his mother has cancer but she told him to go to the dance anyway and to ask the girl he likes to dance with him and he does and she does - full disclosure - this might be because of the old WB show of the same name, but I've never actually seen an episode so...I don't know.

"I'm So Free" - sugar-free chewing gum commercial, both because the gum is sugar...free and also because chewing gum makes one feel free. Or maybe some smartphone plan that has free long distance.

 "Dear Life" - ABC pilot about a bartender/burgeoning stand up comic, used as the theme or maybe an extended intro. Is the show called "Dear Life"? Patton Oswalt would have been offered and would have turned down this show. But Joel McHale might not have...

"No Distraction" - specifically the bridge and chorus - used in the first act of the inevitable sequel to NERVE, before shit gets dark - driving through a city at night, perhaps with someone yelling out the window about how great the night is going to be

"Dreams" -  is there a sequel to Inside Out? If not, definitely something by Pixar. Probably just in the trailer though.

"Wow" might be the only track too "out there" for typical ad agencies. That's not to say it's not viable, just that I'm not a fucking copywriter. Whatever it gets used for it will have the spec "urban".

"Up All Night" - oh, I don't know...maybe, like, a watch commercial?

"Square One" - in the fourth sequel to Bridget Jones's Diary in a scene where her daughter is having a fun girls' night out but she's in love with one of her girl friends? Was Bridget Jones's baby a chick? Can we rewrite that?

"Fix Me" - "hip", "cool" life insurance ad for 30-somethings. My wife suggested that one and it clicks audibly for me.

I was going to go as far as to record little fake commercials using these tracks in these situations, but that felt shitty. Plus, I'm lazy.

My hope is that Colors will prove to the idiot tastemakers, the vaping and vapid Millennial masses, Twitter********, car company ad execs and to himself that he can be as banal, mundane, and relevant as the rest of what's drifting in the cultural septic tank that is pop music. Then he can get back to being Beck, unfettered, and continue making real music for no one but hiss founky self.
And me.

* Not Gibson's worst movie, but certain scenes reminded me too much of Jacob's Ladder, plus he's still a rapey, anti-Semitic piece of shit and no one seems to remember that anymore.

** In my mind, and with regards to the amount of material they've both got backlogged, I equate Beck to a funkier Richard D. James.

*** I used to be in my twenties, so shush.

**** Or "proof", I suppose.

***** Obviously this doesn't apply to each and every single person born between 1982 and 2004 (or whatever the definition of a "Millennial" is). I know a lot of Millennials and a lot of them they kind of hate the label and fight against it, but for every Millennial I know who is not a piece of shit, I know a dozen who are.

****** Kind of. To some people anyway.

******* aka "YOLO". Ugh.

******** Seriously though, I feel like the marketing budget for this album could offset more than one third world country's debt. But hey, check out that custom Beck hashtag!!!!

Whoagina!!!

5.27.10

3:55 pm

Quite a bit of music rambling today, so, if you're deaf...heh heh heh...the pillow talk was a bitch...Jesus...

Anyway, you might want to tune out.

First off, it turns out at least one of my predictions for the new eels album, "Tomorrow Morning", has come true as they posted the cover art and tracklisting last night.

The album will have 14 tracks.

And, something about the tracklisting makes me think my vision about all the songs being spares is also true.

Whereas the majority of the songs on "End Times" (the one about E's personal apocalypse with this girl) were all about how horrible life is without this girl and how there's no point in living anymore and how could this happen to me and no one should be happy and HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN TO ME?!, the titles (haven't heard a note of the new one, but that's why they're called predictions and not postdictions) of the new one are ridiculously optimistic and twee.

Titles like "Spectacular Girl", "I Like The Way This Is Going", "In Gratitude For This Magnificent Day", "Looking Up", "This Is Where It Gets Good" and "I'm A Hummingbird".

Now, I mentioned these song titles to Chris last night, and she suggested they were probably tongue-in-cheek, as E tends to be all the time, but, based on the simple, straightforward nature of the last two albums (of which this one is, again, the third and final installation), I fear they might be just as straightforward and just as deep as their titles.

And that blows.

See, it blows because, way back in 1998, eels put out "Electro-Shock Blues", which was all about E dealing with the personal apocalypse of pretty much his entire family dying and his being left all alone in the world and it was fucking amazing.

It was bittersweet, thickly layered with all types of great melodies, instruments, styles and, the best part, it wasn't a huge downer, it had hope laced throughout.

And it wasn't obvious.

It's truly a fantastic work.

And, at the end of it, pretty much everyone, including E thought he was going to kill himself.

Then, he released "Daises of the Galaxy"; sonically, it was (mostly) airy and simple, acoustic guitars and not much else at times, the lyrics, however, were as double sided as ever, this album was about hope and the future, but it addressed that there might be trouble on the horizon: you just never know.

The overall feeling was about how things are getting better and he's going to be okay.

ESB was him dealing with the tragedy and Daises was him moving on with his life, scarred, limping, but looking toward the future and what it might hold for him.

So, you see, he's done the "crushing apocalypse/things might get better" album set before, but better.

People were actually comparing "End Times" to "Electro-Shock Blues".

I'll agree, as long as we're talking about the fact that both are written in and regarding dark times in E's life, but that's it.

Listening to ESB is like living parts of his life, seeing into his soul and watching him relive these tragedies as they happen in his mind, again and again. Hearing his inner-most thoughts and then watching him put on a stone face and make snide comments about some aspect of this, trying to distract people from what he's really feeling.

Listening to "End Times" is like trying to have a conversation with someone while the drunk guy at the end of the bar is telling you how shitty his life is now that's he's divorced; some times he's mumbling, sometimes he's crying, sometimes he's yelling, but the whole time you wish he'd just shut up or change the script.

So, as I said before, I don't hold a lot of hope for "Tomorrow Morning", as I fear it's going to be a pale, wispy shadow of "Daises of the Galaxy" just as "End Times" was a pale, wispy shadow of "Electro-Shock Blues".

The only up side if I'm, sadly (I obviously don't want the album to suck...), right, at least this trilogy of errors will be over and E can move on, although I doubt we're going to see another period of productivity from him for a while.

Man, it's always a catch 22: you get a great album every five years or three sub-par ones in a year and a half.

I've just had a realization: As impatient as I am, I would rather have a great, instant classic album every four years or so than a meh-fest once a year.

I do not want all my favorite bands to become Prince.

Okay, next, I was alerted today on Beck's site that he guests on the new Tobacco album, "Maniac Meat".*

Tobacco is what I shall call "dirty dick dance music".

It's the music you put on when you've been in your house for about a week without a shower, your entire body is covered with a light sheen of grease and you've gone out of your mind.

You'd hear it at a strip club where the girls, while very attractive, are all missing toes or wearing prosthetic limbs.

And you can't turn it down because there's semen on the knob.

THAT is Tobacco.

I dug their most recent album, "Fucked Up Friends" very much because I'd never heard anything like it. It was so well done and compelling and filthy.

What they're doing to music should be illegal.

The new one isn't as great as FUF (although I'm not totally though it yet), but it's still hard not to want to slip my penis into the pockets of strangers while listening to it.

I highly recommend it for the next time you're having sex in a bathroom stall.

And finally, because we're all angry and tired here: turns out the thing that HTDA was teasing us with was its involvement in Wired's first iPad issue.

In the (non-electronic) paper version, there was an article about how the band constructed their song "The Believers". If you got the iPad edition, you could hear the song while reading the article.

Oh Trenty sure loves his technology!!!!!!

Minutes after this came out, someone had hacked the thing and put the mp3 up on a torrent site.

Unlike what I had expected, it does NOT sound very much like the other two tracks from the EP OR even all that Nine Inch Nails-y (except for the marimbas).

Some Beck-ish aspects about it at times, actually.

It sounds like electronic ceremonial Aztec music.

One could cobble a video together with selected scenes from "Apocalyptico" and scenes from episodes of "Big Love" that take place on the Compound, maybe some Waco footage thrown in for that "real" edge.

It has a hypnotic beat which works very well with the cultish, mantra-like lyrics.

The vocals are husked, barely audible over the clanging, by Mariqueen, and, even more barely audible, breathed by Reznor.

It's not my favorite track off the EP (of which they've put out half, in various formats, in the past month), but that doesn't worry.

This is a fun little project and (duh) I'm looking forward to hearing the full album from these folks.

All right, I think that's about it.

Now I'm going to sit quietly and try not to commit a hate crime on the most annoying person in this universe.

WISH ME LUCK!!!!!!

LOLLERSKATES!!!!!111!!1

KTHXBYE!!!!!

  

*Maybe one of the best album titles I've heard all year, and the album art goes right along with it.

Martin Scorsese: "I Like Gangster Movies! Whee!"

8.20.09

8:46 pm

I watched Casino last night. 

Somewhat by accident. 

It was one of the first five or so movies I put on my Netflix queue back in, oh, I don't know, 2005?

We also received Hairspray.

We need to pay more attention to the passage of time, specifically with regards to our Netflix queue.

The problem has since been rectified, but, I must speak for a moment about Casino.

Why is Martin Scorsese lauded?

I mean, yeah, the movie was long and Robert DeNiro was in it, but...why?

It just felt so...typical.

I guess maybe that's the point of his films?

Like, anyone can do a gangster film, but Scorsese can do a three hour gangster film.

Not sure.

The Departed was pretty good.

One thing that kept bothering the hell out of me: the number of music cues.

Jesus Fucking Christ, if you played some sort of drinking game linked to the number of times the music shifted in a scene you'd die.

Pick a song.

Stick with it.

Roll camera.

And hey, Joe Pesci as a mobster hot-head?

Brilliant!!

Eh, whatever.

I remember hearing this spoken of as "Sharon Stone's Oscar film" and it definitely felt like that, xmax.

So afterwards I watched some of Basic Instinct 2, just to put things in perspective.

Her legs look like skin bags full of cottage cheese.

*SHUDDER*

Anyway, Beck has been doing some interesting stuff lately.

He redesigned his website (http://www.beck.com/) and has been updating it with excellent little tidbits every two days or so.

One is a section entitled "Irrelevant Topics", which is Beck just talking to some other person in the industry about nothing in particular.  The first was him and Tom Waits and the second was him and Will Ferrell.

There's also something called "Planned Obsolescence" which is...like a mix tape, but a mix tape of stuff Beck listens to, which is...enlightening.

Only problem with that is Beck doesn't allow it to be downloaded, a problem Beck (or his label) seems to have with a lot of things.

The other two sections are far more intriguing and fun.

About a year ago, Beck released "Modern Guilt", a Beck-does-a-60's-album album.

Pretty cool stuff.

Not as long or lush as some of his other ventures, but good.

A few months ago, when he and his band returned from Japan, they went into the studio and re-recorded the album in a more acoustic, stripped down fashion and they've been posting it, a track at a time for the past month or so.

Some of it doesn't translate as well (Walls), but some of it allows you to see the song without all the Pro Tools (Chemtrails).

Along with "Modern Guilt Acoustic" Beck has introduced "Record Club".

THIS is the shiznit.

Beck got together with a bunch of other music people (including Giovanni Ribisi and Nigel Godrich) and, in a day, recorded, in its entirety, "The Velvet Underground & Nico".

He plans to do this again and has already with Sonic Youth's EVOL and some other album with MGMT..

I think Prince should do this, because, for all his prolificacy, he's just not doing a lot of good stuff.

Every three albums you get two or three memorable songs and that's just sad.

BUT Prince's recent cover of "Crimson and Clover" was the bomb.

And Foo Fighter's cover of Prince's "Darling Nikki" is also the bomb.

I'm just saying.

The only problem I really have with Beck is (and again, this could be him or his trundling, prehistorically out-of-date label) the stinginess.

When "Modern Guilt" came out, you could go to Beck's myspace and listen to thirty seconds of the new single.

Thirty seconds.

The single was already on the radio and on iTunes (and the whole album had already leaked to the torrent sites), but you could only hear thirty seconds of it.

Along with this is the plan to release a limited edition EP with some of the acoustic versions of the "Modern Guilt" songs on it.

Uh...

The same songs that I can hear on the website for free?

The same songs that, like all of the Record Club and Planned Obsolescence, can be downloaded from a torrent site about an hour after it's posted?

No, I'm not going to pay you for five of these ten songs.

This speaks directly to either Beck's lack of business savvy and disconnection from the modern music fan or that of his label.

I'd like to think it's his label that's not only out of touch but scrambling for already-tried-and-failed methods of raping a few more dollars out of the fans because the idea that Beck is the one saying, "yeah, let's charge them extra for this too" really fucks with the friendly-if-a-bit-vacant-hippy-spaceman -funk-folkster image he's created over the years.

Fingers crossed that the next Record Club with be They Might Be Giant's "Factory Showroom".

Beck could kick the shit out of S~E~X~X~Y...

Also, last week I had my first on screen gig since the Rock Band 2 thing last year.

NOT ONLY did I get to actually act, but I even got to improv.

It was...freeing.

The whole thing was rock solid except for the fact that I had a tiny piece of silicon from my ear plugs stuck in my right ear, cutting off any and all sound.

A little disorienting, but nothing world ending.

That should be all over CNN.com in the coming weeks.

AAAnd I just received the "Davidoff Hot Water" spots.

God damn.

They are just straight up beach porn with my dripping-wet-love-taco voice trailing along at the end.

As soon as they're released, I'll post a link or something.

Tomorrow morning I record yet another VO for the Adrenalina folks.

They like me and pay me so I like them.

It's as simple as that.

Thinking about seeing Inglourious Basterds this weekend.

THIS RIGHT HERE is why I love Beck

Beck talks about his new album 'MODERN GUILT'
Out of all the appropriate situations to find oneself, the least being the hurtling of loose bricks, the parties involved first disclosed their coordinates and proffered cards which happened to be in their pockets. from an embassy of restraint and a superimposed background they assembled at the time of next convenience and weighed their options. drag a filing cabinet across a subdivision or sit out the current situation till a more reliable picture of the situation materialized. neither seemed all that enticing, so the course was set, the workstation laminated and some biofeedback sorted out for use in further research. after the frequency which would shatter a display case was discovered they launched themselves at a barricade of empty cardboard boxes. all these games were inconsequential at first but then later provided some back story for the urge to be a human battering ram. while so many people with disposable incomes sauntered by on the boulevard near the workstation a new kind of light was grafted onto the premises. "how many songs can we fit in an inflatable raft?" "I didn't know there was going to be a flood?" "There isn't, but that rainbow is stalking me somehow..." and so, 120 nights of no sleep and seeing the dawn try not make an impression, there was some hollow hewn thing there that seemed a little basic. "do you have anywhere to put this?" "just leave it where it is." I shook hands with danger mouse and said I'd see him again, maybe at the farmhouse or some scenic location where we could breathe a little.
*******************************************
And it's a good album as well.

All the B-boys are naked…and the hot tub’s looking real dope.

10.13.06
9:40 PM
Went to Best Buy to get all 11 “Friday the 13th” movies but the collection (1-8) was $64 and the only other one they had was “Freddy Vs. Jason”.
It was all or nothing for me, but even I wouldn’t pay $64 for those pieces of shit.
I found them on Amazon for like $47 plus all the others for $6.97 each, I shit ye not.
I might reconsider since they are so bad.
I think what I really need is a financial advisor to slap me when I come to him with potential expenditures like this.
Disposable income indeed.

10:23 PM
I am currently pumping the “Sexxlaws” single. It has a remix and it is funky. In fact, it has put me in the mood to quote and then expand upon a joke that I made up based on the quote that I think is funny-poos.

First, the quote:
“Brief encounters in Mercedes-Benz
Wearing hepatitis contact lens
Bed and breakfast getaway weekends
With Sport Illustrated moms”

Now, it goes without saying that this is an excellent line, period.
However, Beck has a habit of sort of slurring his words, blurring letters into something they were never intended to be and a word might come out sounding different than how it is written.
For example, in the above quote, “brief encounters” comes out sounding like “beef encounters”. I know it is “brief encounters”, but every time I think of the context of the song and then insert “beef encounters”, I fucking lose it. I love to sing it as such.
I think you should try it too; it will brighten up your day.
“Beef encounters in Mercedes-Benz”
Brilliant.
Also, the cover of the Sexxlaws single portrays Beck and some chick in their underwear sitting on a bed. You can see her boob.
It rocks.

This jam is real.

9.22.06
7:03 PM
I feel like something changed while I was on my break. I lay on my bed for about 30 minutes or so then my alarm brought me fully back from the strange place between wakefulness and full sleep. Outside, the sky is a thick gray/blue, full of clouds. I feel something approaching. Something with teeth.
Some of this might be attributed to a few cuts off the new Beck (leaked, d’oh). While he isn’t redefining music anymore (he stopped with “Sea Change” in my opinion), he is still doing interesting things with what has already been created in his musical universe (although not as interesting as he used to, but then again this is my first impression of my first half listen and it needs time to grow on me). “Guero” didn’t grab me like “Sea Change” or “Midnite Vultures”. Some tracks did, but not the whole thing. We’ll see how “The Information” fits into this pattern.
************************************
Also, don't ever watch "Dune". Ever.

The Birth of Debra

Go here to see the creation process that resulted in Beck's magnum opus, "Debra". If you look closely, you can see me in the background, sweating and crying.

Coming to you, 1,000 beats per minute...

8.16.06
5:16 PM
In early 1997, the Coca-Cola Company released a new caffeine charged soft drink called Surge. It was the green of a cirrhosis patient’s piss and tasted like rotten fruit infused with ultrasugar.
I drank it like babies drink breast milk.
(For some reason or other) I stopped drinking it for a short period of time. After that period was over, I picked up a can, opened it and drank deep of the poison sweet within.
I never drank Surge again…until today.
Yesterday I picked up the 8th season of the Simpsons on DVD (my favorite season) and doing so spurred me to contact an old friend from high school, Sunir Joshi.
Hang on, that’s not fair.
Sunir and I were. It’s hard to describe and grasp. We just were. And now, like before, we just is. We just is SuPaul, we just is on this Web, still wondering who the Spider REALLY is (it might be Mr. Snow, but no one can really know for sure…), we just is not allowed to be in the same room as Phil and Will or everything will just not be.
He is about to become a doctor (Infant rape counselor, transsexual anal gynecologist, something along those lines) and that is more frightening than the idea of me babysitting visually impaired, pre-adolescent albino Negroes…..wait…
So we spoke for a bit yesterday and he told me that there is a new Coca-Cola “energy drink” out called Vault and that it reminded him of me as soon as he tried it. He told me to find some and find some I did. Ladies and gentlemen, Surge has returned Granted it is now called Vault and being marketed as an energy drink, but it’s Surge. It even comes in the same green bottle with the same black cap it used to. Those bastards. Filthy dog-fucking whoresons. I have promised not to play their game, but as I type this manifesto of rebellion, I am searching for a vein in which to stick the IV.
Hm.
Just kidding, this shit tastes worse than Surge. I don’t know if they altered the formula a bit or if it’s just what Surge tasted like all along. Yeech.
Changing the subject.
The plans for this weekend have been altered. I am joining Will, Will’s Ladyfriend Megan (maybe there’s an “h” in there, I don’t know but she strongly resembles Jessica Alba so does it really matter?) and Will’s brother, Dr. Drew, in New Haven, Connecticut for the best pizza in the galaxy (this is what Will has actually been working on since he graduated Harvard), something called a “double-fried donut” (which, if it’s anything like chicken-fried steak, I will have lots of and then experience chest pains and osmotic diarrhea) and a documentary about the increased number of reptiles in the field of aviation. It’s a think piece.
True, I won’t be able to see it with Bob Franklin, but maybe he and I can just hit a titty bar next time I go to D.C.
I bet he abuses strippers. It probably all starts out with him using his fame to get the best looking ones and then he jokingly grabs their throat, putting them on guard, but then he smiles his disarming, I-tamed-Madonna-with-this-smile smile and all is forgiven…until he pins their arms behind their head and then finishes the job. He’s probably got dozens of people to clean up his trail of dead prostitutes…
What price, fame?
Also caught the new Scissor Sisters video today. Funky, scary and fagtastic like all their stuff even though the song is a bit of a letdown when compared to their other singles.
And I have been a bad little consumer recently but, fuck, if I’m going to be dead before I’m 32, I am going to use the money I’ve accumulated over my time here. Seriously, what’s eight DVD’s in the grand scheme of things? Carpe diem! Memento mori! Vichyssoise! VICHYSSOISE!!!
S E G U E
Beck has put out quite a lot of his new album by either putting up tracks on his website or putting the videos (the album comes with a DVD containing videos for each of the 15 tracks) on his myspace page. The overall sound is funk like skunk, baby. There is a lot of his other albums’ sound on this one and I am just fine with that. He also seems to have done a lot of “rapping”. I call it “rapping” because it isn’t as idiotic as a lot of rappers out there rapping today. I should probably call it “talking fast with a set meter”. Yeah, there is a lot of talking fast with a set meter and it is blistering. After listening to some of these bits (the talking fast in a set meter bits) I hearken back to something Beck said about his relationship with lyrics in his music. He said something along the lines of the lyrics being the most and least important thing in his music. From anyone else that would sound conceited or stoned, but Beck not only professes it, he proves it. In fact, he fucking LIVES it. I mean, Midnite Vultures makes hardly a lick of sense, but it fits together like Tetris.
Excuse me, could you tell me how to get to the Soviet embassy?
I saw “Capote” the other day.
Laughed my ass off.
I have a feeling that the length and…diffusion (?) of this entry might possibly in the slightest fashion be because of this foul green ichor I have introduced to my unsuspecting body.
Take thy beak from out my heart and take thy Vault from off my wang.
Like a chicken egg to the Gnome King…poison.

8:28 PM
Goodness gracious it has hit me!! Energy drink Xmax!!! Begin the procedure! Hit me with your rhythm stick and sew up the wounds will rain clouds.
I have the inside in my mouth and the dancers are all upstairs except for Joe who is renting the cabin on the third floor (beware the dripping faucet) and dodging the hair attacks when the loon coo coos at 6:35PM. Bad mojo, man. The baddest. Only you can prevent me from preventing forest fires and I ask politely that you don’t. Just let me be. Let me be.
Christ on horses my hands are shaking almost too much for me to communicate to you and the world just how FUCKED UP THIS DRINK IS!!!! IF WE FEED IT TO THE BABIES, THEY WILL DIE OF ANOREXIA AND OTHER DISEASES WITH "X"s IN THEM!!!!

THE
PHONE
IS
RING

It stopped.


IT FUCKING STOPPED!! GLORY BE THE PHONE IS RUNG OUT!

Leaping Jesus it’s like my brain is moving faster than my fingers. If only I had smarter fingers. They would know what to do. They would call someone in charge and report this heinous violation of finger policy. I could lose my finging license for this infraction. Back to the beginning!!! Cigarette smoke! This room smells like cigarette smoke and I can’t do a thing about it. Fire the cannons! YES! I sank your battleship and now I will sink your dream boat. Bam. Sweet, sweet candy. Bam. Touch it!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Chasing my thoughts down like Elmer Fudd.
Wow.
Okay.
Calm down.
I just took a few breaths of this nasty air (armpits…FOUL armpits) and it seems to have worked. I don’t know if this stuff it affecting me this way because I have only had a bowl of cereal today or because there is a lot of “energy” in the drink. Either way my tongue feels scummy. I plan not to drink this piddle again, even though this was a fun little waste of time. My food should be arriving soon and everything will stop blurring then…I hope.
Pray for my blood sugar.

Here Come the Blinking Guero Teeth

On the heels of that huge eruption of stuff from my mental cock comes this:

Reasons Why I Am Excited About the Next Few Months Speaking from A Purely Musical Standpoint

February 15th, 2005
The simultaneous release of They Might Be Giants’ “Here Come the ABC’s” on DVD and CD. The CD is 25 tracks about the alphabet and its letters, while the DVD has the same material, but with videos featuring all sorts of off-kilter not-really-intended-for-kids animation, including the Deeply Felt Puppet Theatre. Although this will be the third “actually intended for kids” release of theirs, this will be the first didactic project. Although, based on some of the clips floating around, they will not be your typical Raffi/Barney teaching songs…thank God. The album contains OVER 60 MINUTES OF BRAND NEW TMBG MUSIC. I love that but I am also a bit pissed that their most recent “adult” release (The Spine) had 16 tracks of 80% new music and it clocked in at around 36 minutes. Can anyone handle quality AND quantity these days? But you know what they say about gift horses…

March 29th, 2005
Beck releases the anxiously awaited follow-up to his redefining work “Sea Change”. The title is “Guero” and, as the title indicates, there is a slightly Mexican feel to the album, especially on the title track “Que Onda Guero”. How would I know? Well, because I am overeager and illegal. About a week or so ago, Beck updated his web site with a blurb about how the album had been leaked but that it was not the finished product. It had yet to be fully mastered and produced etc. and that what was floating around out there was NOT what he intended to release. I downloaded it five minutes after I saw that tidbit. The raw album sounds like Odelay more so than any of his other albums, but there is a very Mexican feel created by samples, guitars etc. It does sound…I don’t know…untreated? There’s just guitar, vocals and drums on some tracks, while others seem to have more production values. It’s weird to hear funky, yet non-complex Beck music, but still refreshing to hear something new from him. The first single “E-Pro” or “E Pro” is a fun Beckish single with a chorus of “na na’s” and a guitar line that will finally bring something fragrant to the stale, shit-smelling music scene of today. I am a bit trepidations about the whole “this is NOT the finished album” promise. The new Radiohead album (ironically “Hail to the Thief”) was leaked a while before it came out and, although I haven’t given them a comparative listen (I’m not a huge Radiohead fan) I think the only major difference, aside from a general better quality to the sound, was one song that had some extra guitars added here and there. And then there was the most recent eels album “Shootenanny!” that was released in 2003. It was totally leaked a month or so before it was released and, although what I downloaded might have been the actual advance retail copy, the thing I downloaded was the EXACT same as the official release. Then again, “Shootenanny!” was recorded in ten days and really didn’t have a lot of production values; very ‘let’s put a mic in the center of the room and play for a few hours’. I have to say that if the leaked copy of “Guero” is the actual album, I will be disappointed. At the moment, the album sounds like Mellow Gold and Odelay but recorded in Mexico, and if the final version is the same, Beck fans will be disappointed, especially after something as masterful as “Sea Change”.

April 28th, 2005
And speaking of eels…they are releasing their follow-up to the somewhat lackluster “Shootenanny!” on the 28th. The best thing a bout a band that puts out a not-as-great-as-previous-albums album is the suspense one goes through waiting for the next one. So “Shootenanny!” was 13 tracks (about 10 or so good ones- I said the album was lackluster, not shitty) and clocked in at 40 something minutes. It was a letdown mostly because the album before that, “Souljacker” was the most complex album (musically) they’d ever done. I have found that that works both ways though. The new album “Blinking Lights and Other Revelations” will be a 33-track double disc album. Perfect follow up to the shorter-than-average, less-complicated-than-average “Shootenanny!” The reason I am putting all my eggs in one basket is because of the essay that has been posted on the eels official site a few days ago. I can’t begin to paraphrase so if you give a hoot, head over and check it out. I challenge you to show me ANYTHING else in music today that is as sincere and complex, bitches.

May 3rd, 2005
Oh God please let this date remain accurate. After more than five years, the new Nine Inch Nails’ album (questionably titled ‘With Teeth’) has been set for release in May. NIN’s first album came out in 1989. Since then, they have released 2 more full-length albums. Yes. In fifteen years, they have released two albums: March of 1994, “The Downward Spiral”. It redefined industrial music and had huge hits with angst ridden teens and popular radio such as “Closer”, “March of the Pigs” and “Hurt”. Five years later in September of 1999, the follow-up, double CD “The Fragile” is released. It debuts at number one on the Billboard charts and sets the record as the fastest falling album in Billboard history. The fans loved it and thought it was even better than Spiral, but the critics thought that artists doing the music they want is REALLY stupid so aside from fans of NIN. This album was regarded as a commercial failure. Since then, Reznor has been doing some shit to distract him from making a new record. About two years ago, he said the new album would be called “Bleedthrough” and that it was almost done. He then trashed that and said “With Teeth”. They start touring in March and hopefully the release date of 5.3.05 will stick. I feel like I might be in for a “Souljacker” to “Shootenanny!” thing based on the fact that “Fragile” had 23 tracks and hit the 109-minute mark whereas “Teeth” has 12 tracks and cannot, physically, exceed 80 minutes. I don’t know. Nothing Reznor does is going to live up to the expectations set by “The Fragile”, but one thing I do know: whatever he does will be a surprise. With the new Beck, eels, TMBG, I have an idea of what to expect, but with NIN I have NEVER been able to say, "okay based on this, the new stuff will sound like this" and THAT is why I have been fanatically checking the NIN web site four times a day for the past 4 years. New, fresh music. Untrodden ground. Or so I hope. Oh God I hope.

So that is why the next few months are going to be good, for me, from a new music standpoint. And since I knew I would have trouble waiting for February 15th to roll around, I waited for a bit to download the TMBG Venue Songs mp3 album which has all 32 tracks that they wrote and performed on the nights of almost every show of their 2004 Spine on the Hiway tour. I had heard about 8 or so, so I have some brand new love for my ears to get me though the next two weeks or so 'til my CD and DVD arrive. After June (once I’ve drunk in all the above releases) I’ll probably kill myself, so my apartment will be up for grabs. Just a heads up. If I’m not dead by June though, there must be some DVD’s I still want to purchase. As soon as I get those though, it’s a three bedroom for like $1900 a month or so. Talk to Chris or Kady about arranging an interview after I’m dead and gone.
*************************************
Also, it is now my Birthday. I have been here 24 years and I have to say...I'm not impressed. And that means one thing...YOU are not working hard enough. So, you all get to work. I'm going to rub one out.

CLOSURE! (part 2)

Marilyn Manson: Antichrist Superstar
This album scared me when I first heard it. The theme is basically the apocalypse brought about by a creature, the Antichrist, who started life as a Worm and then evolved into this terribly charismatic thing that destroys the world because he considers us all dead. The music is so intense and hate filled that while listening to it as I walk through the streets of New York can result in me slamming into people just because I know they can’t do shit. Regularly I wouldn’t do that, but the tone and feel of this album really alters something in me.
This album has 16 songs and it broken into three cycles: The Hierophant, Inauguration of the Worm and Disintegrator Rising. Each of these tells the story of the worm who got its wings and became the Antichrist (or the Disintegrator or the Angel with The Scabbed Wings). The first cycle sets the tone while the second cycle involves the actual transformation of the worm into the angel and the third cycle is about the future and the end of everything.
The album begins with a cracked voice (the voice of the ruler of the world, the Antichrist) saying “when you are suffering, know that I have betrayed you” And then, we hear his voice inciting a multitude to chant “We hate love, we love hate” until the songs explodes with such lyrics as “Hey victim, should I black your eyes again?”, “I hate the hater, I rape the raper”, “Everybody’s someone else’s nigger, I know you are, so am I.” The album goes on from there, laced with malice, contempt, violence, and just about everything negative one can express in a 70 minute time period. The title track is a fist-pumping anthem to bring about the eschaton simply by people willing it to occur. The track “1996” I feel is one of the most violent in which the Antichrist declares exactly what he is and that we deserve all of this: Anti people now you’ve gone too far, here’s your Antichrist Superstar.” The last song on the album, “Man That You Fear” addresses the fact that this creature that the world worships and fear used to be the boy (worm) who was abused and unsure of himself. The song opens with the line “the ants are in the sugar, the muscles atrophied.” Chaos and ruin abound and things are nearing the end. It also explains why he is ending the world: I have it all and I have no choice but to/I’ll make everyone pay and you will see/you can kill yourself now because you’re dead in my mind/. He gets his revenge and as the song and world end many voices are heard repeating when all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed”. That brings about the close of the album. But right before the very end of the CD is a strange vocal track in which we discover that in all the nothingness left behind, the Disintegrator himself feels something cold grow in his chest resulting in his eventual death.
I should mention that with the production values of the post-Downward Spiral Trent Reznor, this album might have been as great lyrically, but not nearly as amazing musically. The difference between a Rhodes piano and a Mellodrone? Reznor. The different between a loud, crashing guitar and a think, grinding world-ending guitar? Reznor. The difference between a song on the album having 10 tracks (one for vocals, one for back-up vocals, one for drums etc) and one have 15 tracks? Reznor. This album might have been good without him, but I’m happy we’ll never know.

They Might Be Giants: Factory Showroom
This was the first TMBG CD that I bought. First of many, but it was their most recent album at the time of the purchase and it was great. The album starts with what became my theme song for a while, “S~E~X~X~Y”. On top, this song is about being too sexy to handle, but the deeper meaning is quite a bit different. As we ALL know, anyone who has a chromosome with XXY rather than the typical XY is a freak and has both male and female biological traits. The lyric: “S-E-X-X-Y, more than enough” indicates that one is too sexy, but also that there are more than enough “X” chromosomes. Then the lines “Cookie in one hand, wig on her head” (a man who is a woman) and “she’s got another plane, she wants to be your man” cinch the notion. Just to clarify, the song was my theme for its swing, funk rhythm, not because I am a hermaphrodite. I will show you all my cocknballs if you don’t believe me. Then there’s “Til My Head Falls Off”, a first person account of living to a ripe old age riddled with amnesia. Then, “How Can I Sing Like A Girl?”, a song about how once in concert Flansburgh sang a song in falsetto to recreate the speed up, higher vocals on a song. Next, “Exquisite Dead Guy”, which is based on the existential literary parlor game “The Exquisite Corpse” and which features the lyrics, “Exquisite dead guy, outside my high-rise apartment, exquisite dead guy, hanging from a sky hook”. There’s “Metal Detector” a song based on a book written by a madman. Then “New York City”, a song done originally by a Canadian band call Cub that TMBG made their own and besides, what are the Canadians going to do? This song was even more important to me because at the moment it was introduced to me, I had acclimated myself to Florida, but still had the need to return to New York, so this song hit the spot. Other gems include “Spiraling Shape” about how dangerous and destructive drugs are, but without being preachy and it was also in Brain Candy, making it immensely much cooler, “James K. Polk, a beautiful telling song about the 11th President of the USA, “XTC Vs. Adam Ant” a song about just that, “I Can Hear You” a song whose concept is being that its finished product, but interesting nonetheless and finally “The Bells Are Ringing” a song addressing mass hypnosis by the tintinnabulations of ringing bells. This is one of their most clever albums to date and it rocks, all the way. Beatle-based pop combined with off-beat, sometimes depressing or dark lyrics. Perfect ingredients for fun and music.

They Might Be Giants: John Henry
The first album on which they used a live band (drums, bass, guitar, horns etc) and not just a sampler or MIDI generator. This added such a new depth to their music and ended up shaping them for the future. After ten years of just the two Johns, they could have gone on producing great music with just the two of them (keyboards, guitar and accordion), but their decision opened up a whole new dynamic for them. The album had a new sound with the same old excellent lyrical quality. The album contains such tracks as “Meet James Ensor”, a song about the greatness of the late Belgian painter, “No One Knows My Plan” which has an infectious conga beat that makes it impossible for the listener not to “bust a move” as they say, “I Should Be Allowed to Think” which features a quote from Ginsberg’s Howl part 2 (I saw the best minds of my generation destroying by madness, starving, hysterical), “Dirtbike” which is about a cult leader, which just happens to be a dirt bike, brainwashing people with its evil charisma, “Sleeping in the Flowers” which is an amazingly arranged song based on a song based on drugs. All the tracks are great. Their horn addiction started with this album and since its release in 1994, horns have been an integral part of some of their best work, and their live shows. This album is a landmark. They Might Be Giants’ transition from one form to another.


Beck: Midnite Vultures
This is the goddamnest funkiest album I own and Beck Hansen is the goddamndest funkiest white man in existence. This album can be described as such: having intercourse with a malfunctioning drum machine. From the first note is “Sexx Laws” to the last note in “Debra” the album makes you want to shake your ass and talk jive-ass nonsense. These songs deal with and satirize sex, love, gangstas and more. The opening tracks “Sexx Laws” nuts into your ear with a brash horn riff, funky guitar and dope drum beat, to coin a phrase. Then in the middle of this techno dance fuck, there is a banjo solo. The banjo is joined by a slide guitar (that twangy country sounding thing). The lone banjo and guitar are joined by the aforementioned funk guitar, brash horns and the song becomes Tetris. INTERFUCKINGLOCKING baby. You wonder how you could even hear this song without the banjo. Any artist that can make a banjo sound cool deserves cake. Then “Nicotine and Gravy” (a song titled inspired when I chain-smoking friend of Beck’s came over for Thanksgiving, became drunk, vomited and passed out. The next day this friend asked what happened. Beck told them they vomited…nicotine and gravy. Despite the title, this is one of the sexier songs, including the lyrics:
I'll feed you fruit that don't exist
I'll leave graffiti
Where you've never been kissed
I'll do your laundry
Massage your soul
I'll turn you over
To the highway patrol
I know it doesn’t SOUND sexy, but once you’ve heard the porn groove of N&G and his sex-thickened voice mumbling that line…you just get wet. Then there’s Mixed Bizness. Oooooh, taste the electro-funk. Every word and note of this is pure funk. In fact, you need a funk towel to clean up afterwards.

I'm mixing business with leather
Christmas with Heather
Freaks flock together
And make all the b-boys scream

Word up to the man-thing
She's always cold lamping
Visine at the canteen
I just wanna watch you dance

Do you wanna ride on the Baltic Sea
I'll be your mistress C.O.D.
I'll comb your hair
Rewrite your diary
Pour champagne on a honey bee

She can really do me
She can look right through me
And make all the b-boys scream

I'm mixing fitness with leather
Homework with Heather
Freaks flock together
And make all the lesbians scream
JESUS FUCK HE IS FUNK EMBODIED. Then there’s his parody of those “hard ass gansta niggas” who rap about bling and spitooy and dink and winkle and all those silly African-American make up words. This song, “Hollywood Freaks” has a phat gangsta beat that would sound tired with any other vocals over it but Beck’s lyrics and vocal tone actually bring life to it. This song brings me to Beck’s use and feeling on lyrics. He said in an interview that his lyrics are as important as they are unimportant. Well…he’s a weird guy. But check this fucking lyrics out:
Hot milk
Mmmm... tweak my nipple
Champagne and ripple
Shamans go cripple
My sales go triple
We drop lobotomy beats
Evaporated meats
On hi-tech street
We go solo
Dance floors and talk shows
Hot dogs, No Doz
Hot sex in back rows

I wanna know what makes you scream
Be your twenty million dollar fantasy
Treat you real good
Expensive jeans
Hollywood freaks on the Hollywood scene

Touch it real good if you want a piece
Party people know I'm that type of freak

People look so snooty
Take pills make them moody
Automatic bzooty
Zero to tutti fruitti
Sex in the halls
Niagra Falls
Local shopping malls receive
Anonymous calls
Hot like a cheetah
Neon mamacita
Eat at tacoria
Pop lockin' beats from Korea
Looking like jail bait
Selling lots of real estate
Looking like a hot date
Banging like an 808

Do you want to feel this?
Do you want to feel this?

Norman Schwartzkoff
Something tells me you want to go home
Champagne, bibles
Custom clothes you own
Calling up from special area codes
Hollywood nuns with the Hollywood phones
I got nothing to do, nowhere to go
I'll tell you what you want
If you want to know
Satin sheets
Tropical oils
Turn up the heat
Till the swimming pool boils
Let all the neighbors
Read it in the papers
Making all those gentlemen cry
Realistic tears

Jockin' my Mercedes
Probably have my baby
Shop at Old Navy
He wish he was a lady

No, they don’t really make sense, but that’s kind of the point of this song. Throughout this track, Beck is yelling a lot of these lyrics as if he’s bragging and showing off. Then he’ll say a few of them in a lower register, sounding sultry. He is doing what all this Puff Daddy’s are doing, bragging about stupid shit and promising equally stupid shit. That’s why this guy is the shit. Because he insults P. Diddy Poo. Among some of the other funkier stand out lyrics are:

Sexx Laws:
Can't you hear those cavalry drums
Hijacking your equilibrium
Midnight hags in the mausoleum
Where the pixilated doctors moan
Carnivores in the Kowloon night
Breathing freon by the candlelight
Coquettes bitch slap you so polite
Till you thank them
For the tea and sympathy

Neptune's lips taste like fermented wine
Perfumed blokes on the Ginza line
Running buck wild like a concubine
Who's mother never held her hand
Brief encounters in Mercedes Benz
Wearing hepatitis contact lens
Bed and breakfast getaway weekends
With Sports Illustrated moms

Peach and Cream:
Don't tell your right hand baby
What your left hand do
You know those road check girls
Will make your brown breath blue

You look good in that sweater
And that aluminum crutch
I'm gonna let you down easy
I've got a delicate touch

You're a torn out page
From a best selling book
Your home girl's on the line
But your daddy's off the hook
Where do we go now?

Give those pious soldiers
Another lollipop
Cause we're on the good ship
Menage et tois

Peaches and cream
You make a garbage man scream
Such a delicate thing

Keep your lamplight trimmed and burning

Anyway, sorry I’m just listing lyrics since the lyrics are just words without the music. My favorite track on the album is “Milk and Honey”. It’s well written and well orchestrated and well funky. The last track is called “Debra” and is the story of a guy meeting a girl named Jenny at a JC Penny and then saying “I wanna get with you, only you, and your sister, I think her name’s Debra”. The super funkiest sleaze track I’ve ever heard. This is the album I listen to when good things happen to me. I get a booking, I listen to this album, it’s the first warm day after a series of rainy nasty cold days, I listen to this album, and walking around this city to the beat of these songs, you feel like Funkor, the ancient God of Funk and Kudzu.

Beck: Sea Change
The first amazing thing about this album is that it came right after Midnite Vultures. Whereas MV was having intercourse with a malfunctioning drum machine, Sea Change is best described as a long, slow drive through the Mojave (thank you Phil). The type of music can come off and simple and a bit country at first, but if you listen closely, you can feel more behind it. Electro-folk is how I described it once. You hear a lonely acoustic guitar note that turns into a computer error buzz. Thick, warm keyboards engulfed in metallic whirs and bleeps. The soundscape is so expressive of the cold, desolate nature of the music that you can actual get chills listening to it. The first song is called “The Golden Age” which connotates good things, the peak of a society is called its Golden Age, but the first line is “put your hands on the wheel as the Golden Age begins”. This immediately instills the image of a man running from society and perfection. Wandering. “You have to drive all night, just to feel like you’re ok”. You can’t be in one place too long without being uncomfortable. Unsettling way to start an album. After hearing the song, you can taste the bitterness with which “golden age” is spoken. The next song introduces David Campbell’s work on the album. David Campbell has worked as a conductor, composer and arranger for over 200 gold and platinum albums, 80 hit singles and has worked on albums which received 111 Grammy nominations, 26 Grammy awards and 3 Oscars. He is also Beck father. His work on Sea Change is his most amazing to date. On this album he does all the strings. Most of the tracks on this album are augmented or created by Campbell’s powerful, emotional string work. The line from the second track “Paper Tiger” “All the deserts down below us, and the storms up above, like a stray dog gone defective, like a paper tiger in the sun” might or might not be anything on its own, but with the driving, swooping strings behind it, you can see these images Beck presents as clear as day. Campbell’s strings turn a sad line into a crushing sentiment, a happy line into triumphant moment, etc. The next song, “Guess I’m Doin’ Fine” is about how Beck now has time to do what he wants, when he want since a relationship recently ended. He is still broken about this parting and is doing his best to look on the bright side, but the light isn’t bright enough to counteract the remaining dark. He tries to be happy and put up a good front, but he’s still affected. The chorus is a mix of emotions and ideas from Beck. “It’s only lies that I’m livin’, it’s only tears that I’m cryin’, it’s only you that I’m losin’, guess I’m doin’ fine.” He can only guess he’s doing fine because his emotional state is so murky thanks to this loss. He might be doing fine, but he really can’t tell. Then, “Lonesome Tears” begins. Beck is questioning why he’s crying these tears, but the questions are hypothetical.
“Lonesome tears
I can't cry them anymore
I can't think of what they're for
Oh they ruin me every time
But I'll try
To leave behind some days
These tears just can't erase
I don’t need them anymore”
He can’t detach himself from his pain or his tears. The next song is, in a way his way of washing his hands of this loss. He describes his love as a lost cause and says he’s tired of fighting for her. Pure and simple. There’s “End of the Day” which stresses the importance of good timing in relationships. A relationship ending too late “I’ve seen the end of the day come to late, I’ve seen the love you had turning into hate, had to act like I didn't even care, but I did so I got stranded standing there”, a relationship ending too soon “I’ve seen the end of the day come to soon, not a lot to say and not a lot to do, you played the game, you owe nothing to yourself, rest a day, for tomorrow you can't tell” and his reaction to both “it's nothing that I haven't seen before, but it still kills me like it did before.” The track “Round the Bend” is one of the most beautiful and sad tracks on the album.
We don't have to worry
Life goes where it does
Faster than a bullet
From an empty gun

Turn yourself over
Loose change we could spend
Grinding down diamonds
Round, round, round the bend

People pushing harder
Up against themselves
Make their daggers sharper
Than their faces tell

Babe, it’s your time now
Loose change we could spend
Where we are going
Round, round, round the bend
This has a very final feeling to it. Next is, “Already Dead” which touches on the angry he feels throughout this album. Everything up to this point, you could see being spoken followed by a dusty sigh, but here we can almost here the words coming through clenched teeth.
Time wears away
All the pleasures of the day
All the treasures you could hold
Days turn to sand
Losing strength in every hand
They can't hold you anymore

Already dead to me now
'Coz it feels like I'm watching something die

Love looks away
In the harsh light of the day
On the edge of nothing more
Days fade to black
In the light of what they lack
Nothing's measured by what it needs

Already dead to me now
'Coz it feels like I'm watching something dyin’.

My favorite track on the album is the penultimate tracks “Little One”. This track has such images that I was so affected the first time I heard it. Incredible powerful images of despair and futility along with a chilling chord progression, yow. This song is almost like a lullaby for a child dying of some horrible disease. The dreams are always waiting or waking, both meaning that neither will come true. And the almost childlike verse “drown, drown, sailors run aground, in a sea change, nothing is safe” is one of the worst things I’ve ever heard, but I can’t say why. I think it has to do with the idea of the sea turning to sand and an upheaval on such a scale that the Earth itself would be affected. It’s the futility and sadness in this song that really get to me.
Go to sleep
We're so tired now
Altogether in a snake pit of souls
New days
To throw your chains away
To try to hang your hopes on the wind

Little one
Just a little way
Today all we need is waiting

Night rise
Like the evening prize
In a turnstile backwards we fly
Cold bones
Tied together by
Black ropes we pulled from a swing

Little one
Just a little way
Today all of the dreams are waking

Can't stand on crooked legs
I'm cross-eyed to the wall
In these harbor lights
Satellites explode

Drown, drown
Sailors run aground
In a sea change nothing is safe
Strange waves
Push us every way
In a stolen boat we'll float away

Little one
Hold on
All of the dreams are wasting

The entire album has been about searching and dealing with things, so one could hope that the final track will leave us in a better place than where we started, running from the warmth and happiness of the Golden Age, but nom the last track is called Side of the Road and that’s where we end up. “In a random room/Behind an iron door/Kick an empty can/Across an empty floor. The lack of emphasis of where the album ends shows just how distracted and desolated Beck is. Just end it here. No one will notice.

Beck

I just wanted to take a moment to say just how amazing Beck is. Beck is, by far, one of the funkiest White men ever created. Midnite Vultures is the ass-shakin'-est album I own and Sea Change is one of the most chill, beautiful complex yet simplistic albums I own and they're both Beck, although aside from the vocals, you wouldn't be able to tell. He's just the shit. That's all I have to say. Yeah.