Beck

It's impossible to talk about Beck's new album without lots of references to his breakthrough 1996 set, Odelay. Guero reunites Beck for the first time with Odelay producers The Dust Brothers, and uses very much the same blueprint as its predecessor, channel surfing through musical genres like an insomniac hunting for a good late-night movie. Many critics, in fact, have already been quick to write off Guero -- named after a Mexican slang term for "white boy" -- as an Odelay retread, a good but pale imitation of that groundbreaking work.

While it's fair to say that there's nothing here as innovative as tracks like "Where It's At" or "Novacane," it would be a mistake to dismiss this as a simple rehash. As great as Odelay was, you could often hear Beck trying too hard to be outrageous, straining to shake the one-hit "Loser" tag that dogged him after Mellow Gold first put him on the mainstream radar. Guero, by contrast, sounds effortless. Still only 33 years old, Beck is now such an accomplished songwriter that he can shuffle around his many influences -- lo-fi hip-hop, coffeehouse folk, psychedelic rock, Delta blues -- without making you feel like he's showing off. It's just brilliant, offbeat, infectious and insanely well-crafted pop music -- the perfect soundtrack to the 21st century's crazy-quilt, culture-clash urban landscapes, like that of Beck's native Los Angeles.

Highlights? Where to start? The spooky samba of "Missing," on which Beck splices the DNA of "Tropicalia" and "Paper Tiger" to mesmerizing effect? The irresistible, bluesy groove of "Scarecrow"? The even more irresistible groove, courtesy of Jack White's swaggering bassline, on "Go It Alone"? The urban clatter and mariachi hip-hop of "Que Onda Guero"? These and half a dozen other Guero tracks are denser, smarter and funkier than anything else you'll hear this year. If this is the sound of Beck retracing his steps, then I say let him keep dancing in circles. Nobody's been able to cop his moves yet. - Andy Hermann

Ever since his thrilling 1994 debut with Mellow Gold, each new Beck album was a genuine pop cultural event, since it was never clear which direction he would follow. Kicking off his career as equal parts noise-prankster, indie folkster, alt-rocker, and ironic rapper, he's gone to extremes, veering between garishly ironic party music to brooding heartbroken Baroque pop, and this unpredictability is a large part of his charm, since each album was distinct from the one before. That remains true with Guero, his eighth album (sixth if you don't count 1994's Stereopathetic Soul Manure and One Foot in the Grave, which some don't), but the surprising thing here is that it sounds for all the world like a good, straight-ahead, garden-variety Beck album, which is something he'd never delivered prior to this 2005 release. In many ways, Guero is deliberately designed as a classicist Beck album, a return to the sound and aesthetic of his 1996 masterwork, Odelay. After all, he's reteamed with the producing team of the Dust Brothers, who are widely credited for the dense, sample-collage sound of Odelay, and the light, bright Guero stands in stark contrast to the lush melancholy of 2002's Sea Change while simultaneously bearing a knowing kinship to the sound that brought him his greatest critical and commercial success in the mid-'90s. This has all the trappings of being a cold, calculating maneuver, but the album never plays as crass. Instead, it sounds as if Beck, now a husband and father in his mid-thirties, is revisiting his older aesthetic and sensibility from a new perspective. The sound has remained essentially the same -- it's still a kaleidoscopic jumble of pop, hip-hop, and indie rock, with some Brazilian and electro touches thrown in -- but Beck is a hell of a lot calmer, never indulging in the lyrical or musical flights of fancy or the absurdism that made Mellow Gold and Odelay such giddy listens. He now operates with the skill and precision of a craftsman, never dumping too many ideas into one song, paring his words down to their essentials, mixing the record for a wider audience than just his friends. Consequently, Guero never is as surprising or enthralling as Odelay, but Beck is also not trying to be as wild and funny as he was a decade ago. He's shifted away from exaggerated wackiness -- which is good, since it wouldn't wear as well on a 34 year old as it would on a man a decade younger -- and concentrated on the record-making, winding up with a thoroughly enjoyable LP that sounds warm and familiar upon the first play and gets stronger with each spin. No, it's not a knockout, the way his first few records were, but it's a successful mature variation on Odelay, one that proves that Beck's sensibility will continue to reap rewards for him as he enters his second decade of recording. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide