On Wed, 2003-11-12 at 21:38, ahorton wrote:
I agree that Beck seems like he's in a holding pattern now (the latest one sounds like bad Nick Drake).
But to many ears the recent Beck was quite a sonic shock. You have to remember that the great majority of listeners today have never heard *of* Nick Drake, much less heard his music.
I don't think it was a shock to anyone who's familiar with Beck. After all, "sea change" followed soundalikes "mutations" and "one foot in the grave", which arguably form a trilogy of introspective, predominantly acoustic records that crib from primitive blues and folk of the Cohen/Drake variety. The real surprise was that it was that "Sea Change" was nowhere near as good as those two records, which remain both the strongest and the most honest of his discography.
Sure. But ask the average person about Beck, and they'll only know the more danceable stuff. The acoustic stuff shot past most people; I never heard either of these when they were first released, and most talk I heard about them was almost apologetic, as if they were aberrations along his way. It's sometimes hard to remember that the average person doesn't have as deep a knowledge of any given artist as folks who talk about them on Net mailing lists do. But working in a record store, I see these folks drift about, their knowledge of music mostly based on what manages to get through to them on the radio -- or, quite often, what friends have burned for them.