I thought that One Beat by Sleater-Kinney was going to be the best album of the year, but I think this one’s got it beat. I first heard it a couple of days ago on his Web site. I just let it play three or four times. It’s freakin’ brilliant. The album it reminds me most of is U2’s Unforgettable Fire --the perfect moody Fall album, released just after the solstice.
I want to wax poetic about this record, but I just kind of feel inadequate. Just go to the site and listen to the preview if you have any doubts. Then go get it.
Remember “Loser”? Can you believe this is the same guy? I remember hearing “Loser” on the radio and thinking “That’s a cool little novelty song.” Ha! How wrong could I be? Does this mean that Weird Al has Sgt. Pepper in him somewhere? Beck does what rock and roll is supposed to do: capture a moment like a big emotional snapshot. Mellow Gold , for example, exemplified the pot-drenched slack filled early 90’s. What better anthem for a generation of losers (like me) who saw the corruption and hypocrisy around them and said “I’m not going to participate in anything I don’t agree with” than “Soul Sucking Jerk”? (“I ain’t gonna work / for no soul sucking jerk”) Then we grew up a little bit and realized that “not particpating in things you don’t agree with” meant basically totally dropping out of society, and we were not able to follow through with our ideals (sound familiar baby boomers?), so we worked in internet start-ups and partied like it was, well, 1999, because it WAS 1999, and because we wanted to distract ourselves from the kind of self examination that had been such an obsession to our earlier selves. Because maybe we knew that our current selves wouldn’t hold up to that kind of scrutiny. So the end of the 90’s for us was ecstasy, champagne, and Beck channeling 1999-era Prince in 1999’s Midnight Vultures. It was the biggest party in 1000 years and Beck was fronting the house band.
Now, here we are in the big, bad 21st century, and what do we have? War, poverty, and the great Republic lurching about like a monkey-navigated rocket car. Maybe us Gen Xers (most of whom have despised that title all along. Thanks, Douglas Copeland for naming us after Billy Idol’s old band!) feel betrayed and cheated, which is the way we felt in the first place, huh? Maybe we’re kicking ourselves for the lost opportunities our earlier policy of non-engagement cost us–maybe we could have stopped the creeps from taking over if we’d just tried a little harder (or at all!). Or maybe we have the sneaking suspicion that we ARE the creeps now. We’re certainly scared about the future, and just generally feeling like shit most of the time. Well, here’s Beck, and he’s feeling like shit, too. He doesn’t have any answers, either. The only thing he can think to do is make a big, beautiful, heartbreakingly sad record. Maybe that will make us feel a little better, or at least make it a little less lonely.
That CD Now review called the album “irony-free”. That’s not entirely true. The first song “Golden Age” is dripping with irony, but not the traditional slacker “I’m going to pretend to like this kitsch, but I really know it’s bad” irony. Ostensibly about leaving a bad relationship, the first line is “Grab the wheel / and welcome to the golden age”* But it’s also about the feeling that here we are, we’re in the 21st century, the promised Golden Age, and guess what? It sucks.
*sorry for the misquote, but I’ve only listened to it about 20 times online. I don’t have the lyrics in front of me.
(I’m sorry to emote at length and presuming to speak for my entire generation at once, but when the spirit moves you, what are you gonna do?)
