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“Bottles of Blue”

Taken from 1999’s Mutations, “Bottles of Blue” is a rusty folk song that features Beck’s crisp vocals over a straightforward acoustic guitar line. Its attractiveness lies in its simplicity, though, as you find yourself humming it long after its final note has died out. A tale of drowning alcoholism, ‘Bottles of Blue’s is Beck’s rousing riposte to Elliott Smith’s desolate “Between the Bars”.

“Debra”

A highlight from 1999’s funky Midnite Vultures, there’s a sultry Prince quality to Beck’s crooning on “Debra”. Unleashing a sublimely silly falsetto, he dons a ludicrous lothario persona, offering a night of rushed romance and – undoubtedly – eventual disappointment to a pair of ladies. Backed by firing horns, the joke is firmly on Beck’s hilariously realised character.

Tropicalia (1998)

Mutations is a classic example of an artist swerving back into the dirt just as they have reached the open road: a bummer album of wonderfully downbeat blues after the blockbuster Odelay. But sat in the middle is this cheery homage to Brazilian bossa nova, shimmying around a walled garden that has filled up with heat.

Devil’s Haircut (1996)

Cellphone’s Dead may have Beck’s funkiest bassline, but for brute force, Devil’s Haircut wins with its insistent three-note riff copied from I Can Only Give You Everything by the 60s Northern Irish rockers Them. There’s something mordantly catchy about the chorus’s repetitious melody, and the lyrics are full of his trademark hippy phantasmagoria: “Temperature’s dropping at the rotten oasis / Stealing kisses from the leprous faces.”

Nobody’s Fault But My Own (1998)

Developing the lo-fi blues of his early work and pre-empting Sea Change’s pellucid studies of a wrecked relationship, Beck’s wallowing is given an almost mystical edge by Indian drones and sitar tolling underneath it. Even more so than the lyrics, it is the hangdog sense of resolution to the chorus melody that suggestsBeck accepts his screw-ups.

Guess I’m Doing Fine (2002)

The depths of dejection meet stoic resolve in this masterpiece of mope. “It’s only tears that I’m crying / It’s only you that I’m losing,” he shrugs with the bitterest humour, reminiscent of Julian Barnes’s attitude towards death, that it’s “just the universe doing its stuff”, or perhaps Patrick Swayze in Road House: “Pain don’t hurt.” The backing is like Thunderclap Newman’s Something in the Air, but with the triumphalism inverted.

The New Pollution (1996)

A love song that only Beck could have written. You or I might be in thrall to someone’s physique or wit, but he admiringly wonders: “She’s got a carburettor tied to the moon / Pink eyes looking to the food of the ages.” The 60s groove, complete with organ, sax and flute flourishes, is almost the stuff of Austin Powers, but it is too strange and brilliant for mere pastiche.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beck songs pack. Ako moram birat onda ova:

“Bottles of Blue”

Taken from 1999’s Mutations, “Bottles of Blue” is a rusty folk song that features Beck’s crisp vocals over a straightforward acoustic guitar line. Its attractiveness lies in its simplicity, though, as you find yourself humming it long after its final note has died out. A tale of drowning alcoholism, ‘Bottles of Blue’s is Beck’s rousing riposte to Elliott Smith’s desolate “Between the Bars”.

“Debra”

A highlight from 1999’s funky Midnite Vultures, there’s a sultry Prince quality to Beck’s crooning on “Debra”. Unleashing a sublimely silly falsetto, he dons a ludicrous lothario persona, offering a night of rushed romance and – undoubtedly – eventual disappointment to a pair of ladies. Backed by firing horns, the joke is firmly on Beck’s hilariously realised character.

Tropicalia (1998)

Mutations is a classic example of an artist swerving back into the dirt just as they have reached the open road: a bummer album of wonderfully downbeat blues after the blockbuster Odelay. But sat in the middle is this cheery homage to Brazilian bossa nova, shimmying around a walled garden that has filled up with heat.

Devil’s Haircut (1996)

Cellphone’s Dead may have Beck’s funkiest bassline, but for brute force, Devil’s Haircut wins with its insistent three-note riff copied from I Can Only Give You Everything by the 60s Northern Irish rockers Them. There’s something mordantly catchy about the chorus’s repetitious melody, and the lyrics are full of his trademark hippy phantasmagoria: “Temperature’s dropping at the rotten oasis / Stealing kisses from the leprous faces.”

Nobody’s Fault But My Own (1998)

Developing the lo-fi blues of his early work and pre-empting Sea Change’s pellucid studies of a wrecked relationship, Beck’s wallowing is given an almost mystical edge by Indian drones and sitar tolling underneath it. Even more so than the lyrics, it is the hangdog sense of resolution to the chorus melody that suggestsBeck accepts his screw-ups.

Guess I’m Doing Fine (2002)

The depths of dejection meet stoic resolve in this masterpiece of mope. “It’s only tears that I’m crying / It’s only you that I’m losing,” he shrugs with the bitterest humour, reminiscent of Julian Barnes’s attitude towards death, that it’s “just the universe doing its stuff”, or perhaps Patrick Swayze in Road House: “Pain don’t hurt.” The backing is like Thunderclap Newman’s Something in the Air, but with the triumphalism inverted.

The New Pollution (1996)

A love song that only Beck could have written. You or I might be in thrall to someone’s physique or wit, but he admiringly wonders: “She’s got a carburettor tied to the moon / Pink eyes looking to the food of the ages.” The 60s groove, complete with organ, sax and flute flourishes, is almost the stuff of Austin Powers, but it is too strange and brilliant for mere pastiche.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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