Consumer Guide Album

Beck: Mutations [DGC, 1998]
Mellow Gold's loser thumbed his nose at the world; Odelay's winner put his mark on it. On this adjustment to musical fashion, a success story discovers what he already knew but hadn't seen up close--eventually, winners lose. No longer immersed in failure, which you joke about (and then beat), he takes on decay, which you hold at bay (for a while). Although he hones his insults when the occasion arises, forget jokes--he's in mourning for dead relationships and the bodily passing they prefigure, and he sounds it. But because he's kept up with the times, he also sounds lyrical and elegiac, evoking the soft nostalgia of folk-rock without falling into it. Embracing the new directness, he feints and sidesteps just like always, exploiting a fad's expressive potential like the shape-shifter he remains. A−