Beck – Colors (Capitol)

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Genre hopping changeling Beck has just released his new album Colors to the masses. Jointly produced with the Grammy Award winning Greg Kurstin, whose recent works involve such high-profile artists as Adele, Foo Fighters and most recently, Liam Gallagher.

Riding on the back of his last album, the Grammy Award winning 2014 release, Morning Phase, Beck has reinvented his sound yet again with this latest release.

Who will it please? Many. Who will it disappoint? Many. Sorry to say, I am in the latter.

For those wanting expansion on the fantastic sounding Morning Phase, this is not it. This is Beck Hansen’s party album for the mainstream. It drips of modern day, polished, commercial pop as he gets as far away from his lo-fi / break-beat beginnings as possible.

On first listen, I was left confused or, was it disappointed? Hmmm, Beck is certainly an artist to keep listeners on their toes. This is not to say it’s a poor album. It’s really not. For an artist of a lesser, shall we say, talent. This is a fine piece of production. Each song could very easily be a single. My disappointment lies in that many tracks on the album sound very borrowed and conformist. But I guess with an artist as prolific as Mr Hansen, we get the odd curveball now and again and it’s for us listeners to play catch up.

So, production wise, this is in your face beats, emphasising sub bass frequencies throughout. Very clean treatments, some interesting vocal effects applied and relying heavily on large reverbs which let the voice float above the music. The tracks all have some great space in them which help the listener pick off some nifty instrumentation in the mix.

Opener Colors draws some influence from the mischievous flute hook on Men at Work, Down Under. With a huge beat behind it, it’s hard not to want to get up and dance. Seventh Heaven is a snappy upbeat jive with Beck spitting one of his coolest vocal deliveries on the verse sections. This one I like, particularly the fast attacked, fat-sounding kick drum. As with other songs on this album, this has elements of MGMT Oracular Spectacular washed all over it.

I’m So Free has a chainsaw driven guitar leading to a pretty dull vocal chorus. The opening bars of Dear Life has a signature Beck sound, like an old western saloon piano which opens to a deep bass beat on which the guitar solo part is reminiscent of Abbey Road period Beatles. No Distraction conjures up the white man reggae styling of The Police.  This is another I quite like, as its bridge section goes into John Hughes 80s film territory. A mixture of great vocals, skanky guitar and deep beats. Dreams has a great guitar riff, again the big beats come in, which then lead to a pretty close imitation of MGMT, I guess this is where my confusion starts.

Straight on the back of this is Wow.  No, not a Kate Bush cover, but a…Snoop Dogg one? Well almost, it’s close enough to get the lawyers in, as this is Drop It Like It’s Hot in all respects. If this had been released first then, yeah, no question, it’s a tune. Great Hip Hop vibe, but even down to the snare fill sound, I find it lacking originality. Saying that, it surely has one of the greatest lyrics this year with Beck telling us to, “get loose, get loose, with the luminous moves”.  Up All Night and Square One tread on what is now familiar ground on this album. Beats, beats, beats – but little more. Last song Fix Me is as close as we’re going to get to Morning Phase era Beck. The beats are pulled back on this, allowing the sweetness of the song to lead.

So ends the album. Will I still be listening to this, like some of his other efforts in years to come? I doubt it. But it’s the sound of an artist really having fun with the palette.

Will the Hipsters like this album? Sure. Will it sell a lot of units? Yes. But since I’m old enough to remember the day when Loser came out and the impact it made, I’ll keep the memories and leave this one for the kids.

Matt Lord

 

 

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