Now I could lie and make myself sound like the pretentious music scholar that I consider myself to be anyway, but this is the sheer truth of the matter: I bought this album because I thought that the silver color of the cover was cool. I love Beck and all, loved Mellow Gold and Odelay, but I'd read lukewarm reviews of Mutations. Still, there was something about that silvery sleeve that I liked. So I bought it with some Christmas money in '99, and brought it home and played it.
And played it. And played it, and played it, and played it.
See, to me, one of the hallmarks of a great work of art is that you can find something new in it with each examination. With every listen to Mutations, I find about eighty new somethings.
Let's make one thing clear here, though: if you liked "Loser" or "Where It's At" or "New Pollution," or even "Sexx Laws," you'll still be totally unprepared in every way, shape and form for what happens on Mutations. This is a psychedelic-folkie-country, stoner album. It's very slow, mellow, and lethargic: you can almost see Beck singing every song while lying back on a sofa with his acoustic guitar across his chest.
At least, that's the impression on the first play-through. On the second, you start to get the vague impression that maybe this isn't so simple as it sounded at first....by the eighth time, you're hearing the stunning, echo-y drums and castanets on "Lazy Flies," the beautiful cascades of drones on "Nobody's Fault But My Own," and the delicate harpsichord and multitracked harmonies on "We Live Again." It's a record that wants you to think it's from a stoned, off-the-cuff jam session, but one which in fact is elaborately and carefully conceived, created and produced. And you can't thank Beck enough for the work he puts into it.
It's most interesting to me that there is a tropicalia song (tropicalia was Brazil's take on psychedelia in the late 1960's)--called, appropriately, "Tropicalia"--because such music is exactly what it seems like Beck was listening to when he conceived most of this stuff. Not everything has the Brazilian horn arrangements and bossa nova beats of this song, but it all does have that kind of swaying, trippy groove to it. Even the honky-tonk country songs, "Canceled Check" and "O Mania," are more spacey songs that make your head sway. Not in any way to be confused with a party album.
The best songs are the ones that pull your attention in with their intricacies. "Nobody's Fault But My Own" is absolutely beautiful: it's a slow, Eastern kind of drone, or series of overlapping drones with Beck chanting the lyrics over it like meditational mantras. At the chorus are two or three Becks singing harmony. "We Live Again" is even more gorgeous, almost like a Renaissance kind of song, and a moody, thoughtful ballad. "Lazy Flies" is more rhythmic, a kind of hippie/beat poet feel with acoustic guitar providing the real thrust of the groove. With new listens, however, what becomes prominent are the punctuations by the bass drums and the castanets, which give the sound an astounding third dimension. And of course, there's the light, colorful Latin touch of "Tropicalia."
Each song, though, is great, in that they have layer upon layer of complexity, sound, and harmony that slowly push their way to the surface with each listen. Of course, that makes this album a bit headier than a lot of people are looking for, and certainly shouldn't be anyone's first purchase if they are interested in learning Beck's music. But it's such a fantastic bit of music, with gorgeous textures and incredible imagination, that it shouldn't be ignored either. Mutations is highly, highly recommended.
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