Salon.com > Jesse Jarnow

Not playing with a full Beck

Fri, 21 Jan 2005 17:42:00 +0000

Those online during the wee hours of the sleepy Sunday evening before Martin Luther King Day received an unexpected treat when word spread that mysterious (and now disappeared) Nappy Cat Blog had abruptly leaked a complete disc's worth of tracks from the long rumored, still untitled Beck album (now named "Guero" -- slang for "fair-haired white boy" -- and slated for a March 29 release).

And -- golly! -- what nice, wholesome, welcome news for a change, Beck's wishes be darned (sorry, man!). Word fireworked out through the deep blue state of cyberspace (as Jeff Tweedy pegged it) via e-mail, message boards and blogs. Several hundred downloads later, the plug was pulled. Here in Brooklyn the next morning, hipster eyes almost universally twinkled when told of its existence.

Though once prolific, with seasonally surfacing B-sides and compilation tracks, Beck -- the modern singer-songwriter most often compared, hopefully, to Dylan -- has had little output since 2002's morose "Sea Change." In interviews, he has said his next album would be harder-edged, but also mysteriously hinted that it might just be more in the wispy pastel vein of "Sea Change." Critics puzzled, fans stirred.

Wouldn’t it have been nice?

Wed, 25 Feb 2004 21:00:00 +0000

Had it been completed in 1966 as planned, "Smile," the Beach Boys' legendary unreleased album, would have begun with a song called "Prayer": a minute and a half of wordlessly angelic brotherly harmony, pure and rising. The band's leader, Brian Wilson, called "Smile" his "teenage symphony to God," and despite the mess that his abandoned masterpiece became, there's no mistaking "Prayer." The song is an invocation. It must be the beginning, or it must not be at all.

According to "Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile!" -- Dominic Priore's exhaustive sourcebook of clippings and "Smile" arcana -- Wilson began tracking "Prayer" several days after beginning the "Smile" sessions in earnest in October 1966. Most of that summer had been devoted to the 18 studio dates that yielded the Beach Boys' classic "Good Vibrations," Wilson's triumphant so-called pocket symphony, which -- in turn -- had followed the "Pet Sounds" LP, the ethereally tender response to the Beatles' "Rubber Soul" that he had crafted in early 1966.

The penguin is mightier than the sword

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 21:00:00 +0000

Hard facts about Berkeley Breathed are scarce. At signings for his children's books, his only public appearances besides engagements at animal rights rallies, he seems genial. But, then, so did Samuel Langhorne Clemens, and he was a notorious son of a bitch. Their faces arrange themselves in similar ways, too, mustaches hovering over instantly familiar smiles, and you can easily imagine either one stooping to speak warmly with a young admirer. It is clear, at any rate, that no matter what he might think of anything else, Breathed loves animals and children.

They have populated his work almost exclusively since the early days of "Bloom County," his wildly successful daily comic strip that ran from 1980 through 1989, earning him a 1987 Pulitzer Prize. They roamed the fantastically florid hills of "Outland," a Sunday-only "Bloom County" spinoff that ran from 1989 to 1995. And they are the main protagonists of the six lushly illustrated children's books he has published since then.

Out of the aeroplane into the sea

Tue, 16 Sep 2003 20:00:00 +0000

The Decemberists, a band from Portland, Ore., have been releasing music for two years, but it took until this summer's rerelease of the 2002 album "Castaways and Cutouts" for them to form a blip on the national radar. Fresh off a wave of critical acclaim for that record, mostly revolving around Colin Meloy's charming dime-novel caricatures, comes the follow-up, "Her Majesty, the Decemberists." There's no doubt that Meloy is a new voice. Critics have compared him to a whole shooting gallery of creeped-out outsiders, from artist Edward Gorey to the Kinks' Ray Davies. But one sticks particularly.

I have an instant affection for Meloy and the Decemberists. And the reason for my instant affection, which is admittedly unfair to all parties, is that they uncannily resemble an entirely different band: Neutral Milk Hotel. And it's not that the Decemberists merely remind me of Jeff Mangum's now-defunct outfit -- they sound like them right down to the smallest of mannerisms: the nasal faux-English accent, the ragtag marching rhythms, the fascination with the Old World, the songs about dead European girls. It's forgivable, because it doesn't sound exactly intentional. It also makes me open myself to their new album more than I would otherwise. Maybe too much.