Mutations - 4012

Amazon.com On his 1996 breakthrough album Odelay, Beck Hansen surprised a sleepy music community by blending funk, rock, rap, alternative, and electronica in ways that were both startlingly innovative and irresistibly catchy. Mutations is equally attention-grabbing but not in the gangbusters-pimp-rock-meets-indie-geek style you might expect. Reflective and plaintive, the album reveals Beck's more sentimental side with an eclectic collection of acoustic-based songs that will sound familiar to anyone who cherishes his indie-rock effort One Foot in the Grave. And don't think just because Beck's gone soft, he's gotten boring. From one song to the next, the chameleonic guru strums pensively, shimmies to a bossa nova rhythm, swirls on a psychedelic cloud, plucks Baroque strains from a harpsichord, and weeps countrified tears into a rusty tin bucket. On Mutations, Beck proves that an undistorted guitar and a bit of creativity can easily sound as exciting as two turntables and a microphone. --Jon Wiederhorn Product description Beck ~ Mutations Review Mutations ... brims with death, decay and decrepitude. But in its own peculiar way, it's also [Beck's] prettiest record to date. -- Rolling Stone Mutations is a deliberately low-key procession of folkish rambles that aren't interested in any grand statements. [It] is a collection of tumblin'-tumbleweeds, mellow-Acapulco-gold melodies on which Beck's drowsy voice and strummed guitar are framed by the lazy whine of a pedal steel, the wheeze of a harmonica, the occasional trumpet, and the bleeps and burps of old-school synthesizers. -- Entertainment Weekly Mutations is a delightful step backward in Beck's career, harkening to his pre-Odelay days and his first lo-fi indie album, 1993's Golden Feelings. -- People There's a warmth to [Beck's] voice that draws you in, grounding even such surreal numbers as the Zen ballad "We Live Again." In a much more subtle way, these songs ultimately insinuate themselves as insistently as "Where It's At" or "Devils Haircut." -- Los Angeles Times Though his lyrics remain too surreal and self-conscious to suit the homespun music, Beck shines in mellow mode.... -- USA Today Unlike the ragged-but-right wheeze that's characterized Beck's previous side trips, Mutations is an exploration of more classic '60s Brit-pop structures and arrangements. -- Vibe [Beck] contemplates entropy and decay with his most lucid and unguarded songs, as he renounces his old studio tomfoolery. Some of the songs could be about long-lost love, but nearly all of them also read as impressions of a time when the only certainty is a free-floating sense of loss. -- New York Times
ASIN: B00000DHYK
VSKU: GGV.B00000DHYK.LN
Condition: Like New
Author/Artist:Beck
Binding: Audio CD