![]() ![]() Though his fourth album Midnite Vultures is shot through with filth-funk satire, there’s no doubting Beck’s love and fascination for R&B, and R Kelly in particular. I think her name is Debra.” A staple of his live set for a long time – he had originally attempted to record Debra for Odelay but dropped it, thinking it was too flippant – this epic falsetto-led erotic funk ode to wooing a girl and her sister is Beck at his most brilliantly absurd. “I wanna get with you, only you, girl, and your sister. There’s poetry here, too: “When the moon is a counterfeit / Better find the one that fits / Better find the one that lights the way for you.” Yet all its heaviness is leavened by the deftness of the orchestration, Nigel Godrich’s production and the beautifully wistful soundscape. It was raining outside, and I wrote it.” Over a gentle fog of sitar, synthesisers and strings (including viola courtesy of his dad, David Campbell), Beck’s earnest, maudlin delivery sees him tread softly between self-centeredness and doleful regret. When asked about the story behind the song, Beck said: “Well, I went down to my basement. Even the title is dripping in introspection. The sound of broken-hearted, disconsolate and psychedelic Beck, Nobody’s Fault But My Own, from Mutations, is the song you play as you sit in the dark of your room, rueing the day past. The song was nominated for best song from a movie at the 1998 MTV movie awards, but lost out to Will Smith’s Men in Black. It also acts as a fascinating link in Beck’s career, somewhere between the mishmash postmodern rock of Odelay and the downbeat psychedelia of Mutations. Beck tells us a hard-luck story about gambling and loneliness and not letting the sun catch you crying. Sure, there’s the clockwork percussion of the vintage drum machines, the picked guitar and vinyl scratches, but the mood is set to a dusky mellowness. Yet unlike the bossa nova parping of Tropicalia, Deadweight’s Brazilian influence is woven together with a dusty, melancholic vibe to create an intoxicating brew. Beck said Deadweight, together with Tropicalia, was a part of his “Brazilian trilogy” (we’re still waiting for the third instalment). This song – a stopgap between the albums Odelay and Mutations – is taken from the soundtrack to A Life Less Ordinary, but don’t let that put you off. It not only helped lift Beck into the mainstream, but by namechecking 70s outsider musician Gary Wilson (“Passing the dutchie from coast to coast / like my man Gary Wilson who rocks the most”), he helped to revive someone else’s career, too. The title and many of the spoken samples come from an obscure 1969 sex education album titled Sex for Teens (Where It’s At). Freewheeling, inventive and irreverent, it’s a bewildering but beguiling mix of bizarre samples, an Afrika Bambaataa-style groove, a funked-out lounge-lizard keyboard line and a detuned holler of “I got two turntables and a microphone” – pilfered from Mantronix’s seminal electro 12in Needle to the Groove. Where It’s Atįrom the hiss of needle on vinyl at the start and the “jigsaw jazz and the get-fresh flow”, this might be the song that best sums up Beck’s magpie influences. There’s both resignation and hope there, and, with the line “I’ll be lonesome when I’m gone”, a real emotional punch in the gut. The lyrics – meeting a girl, following her out to an island in Washington and getting a soul-destroying job washing dishes – gives us a rare glimpse into his life. From the time he stumbled upon the New York anti-folk scene’s first wave in the late 1980s, Beck was influenced by the Delta blues, and this delicate, wiry guitar over a spectral, hypnotic melody, and some mumbled autobiographical lyrics, is a shaggy and moving embodiment of that spirit. This is Beck putting a modern twist on the blues tradition, its sloppiness and the fizz of the recording providing an enchanting intimacy. Here the magic is in the textures and the imperfections. Another track from his debut album, Mellow Gold, but this one shows a different side to Beck: the contemplative, Delta blues guitar-playing gonzo raconteur.
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