Mutations

Product Information

It's definitely worth tracking down for the 'Every little nook and cranny Beck did in the 90s' collector. No videos were made for the album, and aside from appearing on Saturday Night Live, Beck did little to promote it, but such was his stature at the time that the album eventually went platinum and won Best Alternative Music Album Grammy. He lodged alt-rock radio hits in an era where that still mattered, performed at the Grammys, losing Album Of The Year to Celine Dion. Singles were released for the songs " Tropicalia", "Cold Brains" (Australia and New Zealand only), and "Nobody's Fault but My Own" (Japan only). Beck and his crack live band cut a song a day for 14 days, for an off-the-cuff feel that Godrich would soak in his trademark antiseptic, Kubrikian sheen.

Really surprised at this lp , reissues seldom sound this good , if this lp is missing from your collection its worth having , if your 1st pressing is a little scratched and worn then this is one of those rare occasions where a reissue doesn't mean loss of quality. O Maria” might revolve around an oddly moving couplet that signifies the need to grow up already (“Everybody knows/ the circus is closed”) but it glides by on a ’60s melody that feels cloned from Donovan. Though less commercially successful than the preceding Odelay, it won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. Spectre sonore respecté et pas ou peu de craquements audibles, plus qu'à espérer un repressage de ce niveau pour "Midnite Vultures". The production style was very different from that of Beck's previous album Odelay, which was heavily influenced by hip hop music and contained many samples.

Why should we think that writing songs about being horny and wanting to dance are any less valid than songs about watching your relationship fall apart? But while Beck is a scholar of music, he’s never been content with merely reproducing his record collection. It is blues-influenced and he sings moving lyrics about heart ache and the sadness of life, themes which fit his voice perfectly. It is also possible that “real Beck” is yet another guise this chameleon of a performer decided to put on, in the process making us question if “real” really means anything at all.

He had become such a shorthand for “Smart But Accessible Alt-Culture Figure” that MillerCoors even shamelessly ripped off his whole steez for a beer campaign based around a slacker character named Dick. Tout est dans le titre, on savait que l'album était bon au format CD, on sait maintenant que ce pressage vinyle (Geffen / Bong Load Records 2017) est superbe. But listening to Mutations today, I think what the album tells us is that even when he’s trying to be serious, Beck is still a playful guy. The gulf between those two says a lot about Beck (and also about what some critics like to champion, but that’s a discussion for another day), but its also what makes him so hard to pin down. Mutations would prove that Beck could do sincerity, or at least Sincerity, just fine thank you very much, and the woozy, operatic country rock he summons here in many ways feels like a blueprint that Mike Mogis and Conor Oberst would follow with Bright Eyes, where the slowly unraveling ballad “Static,” tucked all the way at the end of the album, feels like Beck’s big budget answer to the delicate balladry Cat Power and Elliott Smith were getting up to, declaring “it’s a perfect day to lock yourself inside” as the guitar solo shrugs and the keyboard lines evaporates.But honestly, this is probably because of the album highlight “Nobody’s Fault But My Own,” which finds Beck beating himself up over unspecified mistakes over a sea of psychedelic strings that could have been sampled from Rubber Soul. In fact, one of the nifty tricks of Mutations is how it sounds simple upon the first listen, then reveals more psychedelic layers upon each play. I get the sense that amongst critics and fans, Mutations is often considered Beck’s dress rehearsal for his 2002 heartbreaker Sea Change, trying sadness on for size before later going Full Desolation. Beck appeared on Saturday Night Live in promotion of Mutations, performing "Tropicalia" and "Nobody's Fault but My Own".