ALBUM RECOMMENDATIONS |

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The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Beck

[#] Guero (2005)

Reviewed July 29, 2023

"Sun-eyed", "cyanide", it all works out the same in Beck's world.

Drop the Odelay comparisons from your mind. Odelay has a completely different tone to Guero; Beck's first album since breaking out, the sound of a twentysomething trying to prove himself, strewn with references to being wack and living out of a suitcase to be a traveling item to gawk at (and carburators, jaundiced honchos, rec centers, and those that swing both ways, AC/DCs, but that's neither here nor there). For all the media hype about 2000s-era Beck, grown and matured as lifers entering their thirties do, reuniting with the Brothers Dust, Guero has lyrical focuses more on the world ending, whether his own ("Farewell Ride") or everyone else's ("Earthquake Weather"). A Beck album without humor sounds to some like instant mac without the cheese packet, but I find that notion overrated.

As he's good at, Beck's able to tie together space noises, grinding guitars, orchestral sections, Game Boy blips, and slinky bass with a sonic profile built for 2005 indie, not 1996 alt. Earthy is the way I'd describe it. Everything as a real gritty stomp to it, filled up with slide guitars and harmonicas, even the singles. You can imagine Beck's lowest moments, like the limping farewell "Broken Drum" or the ode-to-uselessness "Scarecrow", suit this approach best, but even his most upbeat tracks have a matching visible decay to them. Guero is what happens when music nerds use their versatility for introspection rather than humor. It might not have the "instant-fun-just-add-water" appeal of Odelay, but that would've looked tryhard a second time anyway.

Essential:	Quintessential:	Non-Essential:	Rating:
"Missing", "Earthquake Weather", "Broken Drum"	"Black Tambourine"	"Emergency Exit"

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