Genius slacker boy is back. Did you miss him? Maybe not, as his most recent surfacings have found him making somewhat conventional, somewhat luminous balladry. His 2002 disc Sea Change, a pretty exercise in Americana heartbreak, affirmed lyrical and melodic subtlety, but finally registered remote and cool, when the intention had surely been warmth, intimacy, and maturity. No one likes being called “the voice of a generation”; let them speak for themselves, Beck seemed to say, only to find the thrill of his own voice dissipated.
On Guero, the thrill is back, with direction, confidence and surprising poignancy. Talkin’ trash to the garbage around us, trading jokes about Yanni and mullet-sporting honkies (“guero” is Chicano slang for “white boy”), and making peace with his own failings, Beck has returned to the Dust Brothers and the pop-culture pastiche of his name-making albums.
The result, this time, isn’t nearly as kaleidoscopic. Pop genres — psychedelic pop, hip-hop, metal, drum and bass, industrial electronica — unite into tangible, whole compositions. For some, that tighter fusion could be seen as hedging the bets of Odelay, a retreat into a long-lost former self. Beck sees no need to break new ground, not with so many hooks dangling around him, from acoustic slide-scrapes and handclaps, to power-pop guitars and distorted harmonicas, to homespun synth lines and lots and lots of funky loop-de-loops.
He moves lyrically beyond wiseguy wordplay and opens his eyes to the beautiful and frequently brutal world around him. The mood is personal and political. The love-lost samba of “Missing” (“Always someone missing someone”) cross-fades into the lower-class housing party of “Black Tambourine” (“She lives in broken-down buildings/Can’t pay the rent again/These spider webs are my home”), into the Bollywood mash-up of “Earthquake Weather” (“I push, I pull/The days go slow/Into a void/We fill with death and noise”), into the anti-fundamentalist, vocoder grime of “Hell Yes” (“Makin’ points on the verge of pointless/Code red cola war conformity crisis/Fools anointed to the follower’s fanfare/Perfunctory idols rewriting their bibles”).
Guero isn’t quite the throwdown Beck’s subgenius fanboys might have planned, but it’s a happening all the same: crafty and danceable, with more than enough space on the floor for thinking, feeling, and wondering what’s next.
