Beck: Midnite Vultures

BY CAMERON LEADER-PICONE

While Parsons dealt with country, folk, soul, blues, and rock, Beck has added the developments of the last 30 years to his music: rap, funk, electronica, new wave influences, and punk. And though Odelay remains Beck's best synthesis of all of these influences into a single statement, Midnite Vultures still resists being the simple genre exploration it would have been in the hands of a lesser artist.

Beck probes his soul roots here, but brings his own brilliantly warped sensibility to songs ranging from Stax/Volt horn workouts ("Sexx Laws") to rap ("Hollywood Freaks") to pseudo-electronica ("Get Real Paid"). The obvious reference points for the album are Prince and Sly and the Family Stone, which both made similarly genre-defying music, but one need look no further than the first track to realize that Midnite Vultures is not a mere imitation or parody. "Sexx Laws," for example, contains a remarkable banjo-and-steel guitar break that not only impresses with its audacity, but works so well that one wonders why it had never been done on those old Stax/Volt singles. As the break ends and the horns gradually enter under the steel guitar, the moment is transcendent.

Each song on the album has its own unique charm, from the rap of "Hollywood Freaks" (which brilliantly toes the line between parody and tribute), to the acoustic guitar over the coda in "Milk and Honey," to the country-electronica ballad "Beautiful Way," where the steel guitar under the slow beat mirrors the song's heart-broken theme. The record's finest moment comes with the slow jam finale "Debra." Vocalizing Beck's desire to have a threesome with a girl and her sister, it mixes a near-falsetto vocal and a suggestive beat and is one of the sexiest songs to come along in years.

At heart this is a party record, and no one since Prince has created as funky an album about sex. As its cover suggests, Midnite Vultures is flashy, but Beck doesn't let flash get ahead of substance. The listener is left with an album that stands not just as something to spin in the background of a party, but as an important work in its own right, one that is more than deserving of the Grammy for Album of the Year. (Geffen) 

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