SOUNDTRACK: BECK-Stereopathic Soulmanure (1994).
Depending on who you believe, this was Beck’s first or second or even third album. Certainly it was recorded earlier than the other records but who knows what the actual release date was, or if it even matters (it doesn’t). This album plays like a demo tape of home recordings of a talented folksinger who doesn’t want to be labelled as a folk singer ans is experimenting with all kinds of other sounds, including tape manipulation, home recording and utter noise (there’s a Sonic Youth sound connection here, before they ever did anything together).
But anyway, that’s got nothing to do with this album. My version has 23 listed tracks and two bonus tracks. And since I’ve no intention of doing a track by track analysis of the album, I’m going to group some tracks together.
There are a few styles of music on the record. There are about a half-dozen noise/nonsense tracks–distorted guitar, distorted voices, sometimes sheer noise–like the “bonus” track which is some ten minutes of just nonsense. There are about a half a dozen tracks that are basically just talk–old home recordings from when he was a kid, and other spoken tracks. There are even a few tracks from a guy named Ken who is apparently an older guy singing what sounds like hobo songs (which I suspect Beck does not play on at all).
There are also a number of different instruments which (I assume) Beck is playing. He plays banjo very well, there’s an accordion track, and of course guitar.
What sets this apart from being a simple nonsense album is that there are nearly a dozen “real” songs. There are a couple of well sung country tracks, with a slide guitar. There’s also some anti-folk, rap and live numbers. These are fleshed out, proper songs–musically complete. It’s in the lyrics that you can hear Beck fighting the folk/country pigeonhole. He has three songs that are more or less rapping (like “Loser”). There’s a couple of songs that were recorded live (in a club with half a dozen people), and are mostly silly. And then there’s a series of anti-folk songs. These are pretty traditional sounding songs, but with layers of noise or weirdness that keeps them from being traditional folk. Like “Satan Gave me a Taco” which is complete song but is obviously quite silly. And yet, Johnny Cash covered the song “Rowboat” on one of his Americana albums.
None of the recordings sound more than lo-fi, but the good songs all sound good. It honestly sounds like a guy trying desperately to show off what he can do–and hoping desperately to get accepted by just about any genre. Except that he clearly has his own identity (as varied as it may be). This record is certainly not for everybody (as suggested by the incredibly low sales), but if you like Beck’s early experimental stuff, there’s enough really good stuff here that’s worth checking out.
[READ: March 9, 2014] Tintin: The Art of Hergé
Sarah bought me this book for our tenth anniversary (which is “tin”, get it?). We’ve both enjoyed Tintin over the years, more as an icon than as a collection of stories (which I believe she has not read and which I’ve read about 1/3 of). The Spielberg film and subsequent video game are both really cool too. This book is an amazing look at Hergé as an artist and at the Hergé museum, which looks amazing.
When Sarah and I were in Belgium, we went to an animation museum which featured Hergé heavily. Since it was a decade ago, I actually thought that this book was about that museum, but no, the Musée Hergé opened in 2009 and was designed by French architect Christian de Portzamparc. The first chapter of the book is dedicated to the Museum, and do de Portzamparc’s designs and execution in the spirit of Tintin. And I have to say the building looks amazing. The facade alone is beautiful, and his explorations light and dark and shape look really awesome. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 