OctaneHugo

From James' heart to my doorstep:

As someone who loves Beck's music, this piqued my interest: a collection of B-sides that were released ONLY in Japan. Only 70,000 copies of this album were made. Beck is a talented guy so I was expecting good stuff.

The first tack, "Totally Confused", is hypnotizing and shuffling. It's got a driving drum roll base with some cool tom hits and a nice bass rhythm, a cool acoustic guitar and there's some excellent female backup on Beck's singing. There's a violin solo here, too, and all in all it's a very nice song.

The next one is called "Halo of Gold", and it's definitely strange. It's got a very ethereal guitar(?) and some really neat keyboard and sitar stuff going on, with more drum-and-bass combination and the return of the female background vocals. It sounds quite a bit like a Beatles song (to me) at a couple of points. It gets pretty heavy sometimes, but still remains very chilled out. Interesting. It finishes up with weird horn noises. Good song.

The next track is "Burro", which is apparently a Spanish remake of "Jack-Ass" from Odelay. It's got an acoustic guitar and a heavy emphasis on Latin sounding horns and some strings tossed in. It's pretty decent, but got on my nerves after a while.

The fourth song here is "Brother". It's very quiet, with a guitar (again acoustic) and a piano, with some other random noises in there as well. Very peaceful.

And then there's "Lemonade" and I nearly shat myself when it started. I was falling asleep by the end of "Brother" and then I get distorted drum smashes and Beck screaming at me about belly blades and monster power. There's some serene acoustic guitar and a quiet vocal, then back to first verse style. I'M AWAKE NOW, YOU CAN STOP. It's a great song, though, love the contrast between the guitar (and later, piano) sections that are fast but quiet and the distorted, almost industrial-sounding parts otherwise.

"Electric Music and Summer People" starts off like a techno song and features some Galaga-era arcade noises before some high-pitched, far away vocals and a woman moaning off in the distance. The electronic beat keeps up with some distorted guitar noises and Beck's singing, along with the woman. This really does sound like electric music and summer people; it's definitely great. There's tambourines and claps and some bangin' chick singing here, and a filthy outro that lasts a minute and a half.

"Clock" starts with a pretty funky beat going down with some drums, bass, guitar and more techno noises. Beck sings through a prison loudspeaker and all I can think of is driving down the road in a convertible at around 18:30 in July wearing a pair of sunglasses and nodding my head as my left arm hangs on the door and I drive lazily with my right. There's some orchestral stuff that goes down about midway through layered over the beat and it turns out to do some really cool stuff and segues into a guitar solo which is pretty hot. Gets pretty harsh for a while, then resumes the only cool beat portion for the outro, including a distorted guitar solo thing. After a fadeout, the finale starts.

The album finishes up with "Feather in Your Cap", which opens very slowly with your typical bass-drums-acoustic guitar combo, keeping up the beat when the vocals kick in. Then some cool stuff starts going on with a keyboard, and the acoustic guitar starts doing some neat stuff along with the drums. It's a nice closer, shuffling like "Totally Confused" though definitely not as catchy or memorable. I like the piano that kicks in around 2:45.

Overall, I think this is a really cool album that has some legitimately awesome Beck tunes on it. It's a shame this wasn't more widely distributed, because I really like it.

At least, I managed to listen to it 3 times through to write all this and still enjoy myself.

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