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Today is Beck Day at Said the Gramophone. Beck Hansen is fascinating: he seems to have a knack for all the finest opposites in music - coolness, sincerity, eclecticism, dedication. He's done the lo-fiest of lo-fi, novelty hipster pop, zinging pleather soul, sample-knit hip-hop, angst-ridden folk... and all of it with what seems like a genuine love, an unquenchable desire to explore. He has not yet produced a masterpiece, but I nevertheless cling to the hope that his day will come. I cling and cling and cling...
In the meantime, though, he's released eight albums of gutsy ambition, from the static-and-cement of A Western to the patchwork of Odelay, the Prince routines on Midnite Vultures, and the tragic, mediocre Sea Change. Add to this countless b-sides, robot dance moves, and a penchant for surprising me - yes, if Beck was on the ballot in a Canadian political leadership race, I'd join the party in question, vote, and then follow through at the general election, NDP or not. Beck would support the CBC, wouldn't he?
Aaanyway...
Beck - "I Get Lonesome". I referred to this track yesterday, and then felt like sharing it today. This song is just so painfully dead, so rotted through from a "lonesome" ache that there's only a husk left; dry bark. The drum thumps and thumps, something standing in for a heartbeat. You can hear the way the singer's already hit a dead-end, that he's "a slab / stiff as a stick on a board": there's an awful irony to the "I get lonesome" of the chorus, the way it implies he's still changing, still getting lonesome, not already locked into this grey chipboard casket. I was once in a play where a character threw himself in front of a train to the tune of those closing "ooh-oohs." This is taken from 1994's One Foot in the Grave; it's Beck in his early mode, tangled and hoarse, long before he moonwalked at the Grammies. A steal from K Records for $12 USD.
Beck - "Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime". It's my most anticipated movie of the year, the one that bloggers and critics alike are hailing as a masterpiece, but yes, I have yet to see it. My date with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is Wednesday night, and I'd rather like to skip the intervening moments (have them erased?) and jump straight into the opening credits. To help me along, then, is Beck's new song, recorded with Jon Brion for the film. A cover of the 1980 hit by the Korgis, Beck's wearing his troubadour hat - he murmurs sadly, sincerely, over small sighs of strings and a Brion signature organ (see Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love). An electric guitar weaves in and out of the scattered drum hits, but it's Beck's voice that pulls us in, like Leonard Cohen's velvet croon. Listening to something like this, it becomes easy to imagine the role Beck will play fifteen years from now, evolving into a deep-voiced hipster emeritus, an Elvis Costello, David Byrne, Tom Waits. (For more Kaufmania, today's Tangmonkey Link-o-the-Day, the incomparable Being Charlie Kaufman.)