Beck's "Mellow Gold" (A Sad Legacy?)

How does one dissect an album exactly? Is this going to be an easy process? I am going to try my best to explain as best I can, the beauty and truth that is "Mellow Gold." This is the major label debut of an mysterious elf simply known as Beck. This is probably one of the most bizarre albums to crack the Top Twenty on the Pop charts, but that's appropriate considering the fact that the musical mainstream was somewhat more experimental and diverse in 1994. While it is my opinion that quite a lot by Beck is unfortunately dated, making him very much a product of his time. "Mellow Gold" is indeed dated, but it is still just as entertaining as ever. The musical tricks that we associate with Beck today were very much a new phenomena in 1994. "Loser" is the opening track, and is a damn sight more lyrically impressive than Cobain's mumbling opus "Smell's Like Teen Spirit." The fun didn't stop with "Loser," as "Mellow Gold" successfully expresses creativity in Pop at its finest. Every musical idea is a successful experiment and all twelve tracks on this record bear repeated plays.

In the early days, when it appeared that Beck's mainstream success would be a short-lived affair, he was almost like a user-friendly Captain Beefheart, guaranteed NOT to scare your girlfriend. While he was ultimately destined to be a vacant Pop icon, the youthful Beck that greeted all of the mainstream attention that "Loser" brought him in the early '90's, was a rather difficult character to pinpoint exactly. He had an idyllic public relations technique at the beginning of his career, in which he in fact pretended to be an early twentieth-century hobo, and it worked, as the rags to riches saga always sells. Beck's lyrical content of the time period matched the sort of anything goes approach of a hobo hopping a freight train. He was examining down and out characters, and often prattled on about being unemployed. Much like David Lynch, Beck was ultimately spinning universal yarns, albeit, in a decidedly surrealist fashion.

One of the most haunting numbers on the record would have to be the eerie ballad known as "Whiskey Clone (Hotel City 1997)," and of which, we are celebrating the tenth anniversary. It's a spooky little number about hopelessness, convalescing, and the ability to talk with squirrels. The strange Folk tendencies continued on the Lo-Fi epic "Truck Driving Neighbors Down Stairs (Yellow Sweat)," and appropriately displaying his ragged lifestyle of the time period, the introduction to the song captures an actual verbal spat that took place between two drunken truckers in the apartment either below or above Beck. "Mellow Gold" is also a noted record that actually did something interesting with Hip-Hop, and that was to translate the traditional Talking Blues lyrical tradition to heavily beat-processed and sampled jams. There is even a sort of far away Psychedelic appeal on more laid back numbers like "Steal My Body Home" and "Black Hole." The Bob Dylan comparisons often seemed appropriate, as lyrics were very much the focus of Beck's early output. Never again did he display such lyrical inventiveness as was the case on his first three or four records, most of which were released in 1994.

In retrospect, certainly, "Beer Can" should have been a huge hit. It would have been a nice sequel to the "Loser" chaos of the time period. Another failed single was "Pay No Mind (Snoozer)," again, another potent Folk Ballad. "Pay No Mind (Snoozer)" was a rather curious follow-up to "Loser," and they seemed to have made a music video for the tune just for the hell of it, and by they, I mean Beck and longtime music video collaborator Steve Hanft. Again, as to why Beck did not have a few more hit tunes off this record is beyond me, as anything here is certainly more catchy than pretentious rubbish by The Smashing Pumpkins or Nine Inch Nails. But again, a lot of this had to do with the fact that Beck was a rather difficult bloke to market to the young people. He survived primarily based upon the strength of his songs and his ability to craft impressive albums as well. Only later did he become more so a "character" that was more palatable to mainstream audiences, or at this point, the new Adult Contemporary crowd.

I am also quite keen on "Nightmare Hippie Girl," a gentle Folk Ballad worthy of James Taylor. It is also always good fun to rock out to the Noise Rock of "Mother Fucker" as well, and do keep in mind that Beck had some pretty good pipes for Death Metal vocal stylings during this time period as well. And while I won't mention each individual track on this creatively fertile record, I will say that it is ultimately probably Beck's very best, and maybe always will be. Even during the time period in which this album was released, Beck was somehow an alternative to Alternative. Everything about his music seemed to be external, almost like Pop Art set to music, albeit, and as mentioned, with a wonderful surrealist twist. Being a bit of a musicologist even prior to being a Scientologist, ensured that Beck had some fantastic musical influences, and for a fan like myself, he was indeed a gateway to artists far superior than himself. So, here you have an album that stands on its own to this very day as a wonderful creative work of art in Pop. If you do not own this record, do indeed purchase it. And if it has in fact been lying rather doormat on your shelf, do indeed dust it off and give it a friendly listen.

And now, the Pop hits that never were...

Pay No Mind:



Beercan: