3 keepers
keeper avg .200
Beck introduces "Elevator Music"**** "one two you know what to do". Minimal instrumentation except for Beck's (or one of his backing guys') wobbly bass riff leaves plenty of room for percussion with a lot of spacial variation for Beck to hip hop over, reminding me of Gang Of Four or Hot Chip, and on "Cellphone's Dead" (one by one I'll knock you out) Nigel Godrich adds atmospheric piano and vocal ahh's to Beck's hip hop delivery. The album's hip hop tracks draw from approaches Beck has used in the past, including the atmospheric "Dark Star", the more computer-driven "We Dance Alone" and "1000" BPM", and "Nausea", "No Complaints", "Motorcade", and the title song return to the hip hop folkie approach of "Loser." Other tracks are more melody-driven, including the modest "Devils Haircut"-like single "Think I'm In Love", "Soldier Jane"**** with a Sea Change psychedelic deepness, and "New Round" and "Movie Theme" with a more stellar Radiohead spaciness. And "Strange Apparition"**** is an exuberant outlier, with the hand percussion and Beck's (or Greg Kurstin's) jubilant piano riff driving the song like "Sympathy For The Devil." Though most of the songs often feel light on content, Nigel Godrich's production reigns supreme throughout, and with a wide variety of percussion sounds and approaches the album never sounds boring, as even the noisy "1000 BPM" is built on original and memorable sounds. The 10-plus-minute closing suite "The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton" unwinds into a psychedelic montage, which while not exactly exciting is much better than what the big, respected bands of the 60's created when they ended up going up their own asses, such as "Revolution 9" and most of PInk Floyd's Ummagumma.
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