Beck - Modern Guilt
I'd never even seen this cover until Ash at the other record cover site wrote it up. Usually, I see Ash as an infinite trough of rockalicious wisdom, but this time... well, let's just say my first reaction to the Sleevage write-up was "ARE YOU ******* BLIND, YOU *********** ***** KOALA-EATING *** ***** CRAZY ************* FORD PINTO ******* BACKWARDS-TOILET-FLUSHING ******* HATERS?" (Bob doesn't like cursing on his blogs. To paraphrase a pre-"Let's sell our company to the Belgians and see if they are as successful with St. Louis as they were with Rwanda" Budweiser slogan, this asterisk's for you, Bob.)
Where was I? Oh, right. Beck.
I hate Beck. I think he's built a career on being clever, and I think his career's been supported by a bunch of clever, Gen-X twats. (Or *****, if 'twats' is a bad word.)
But this cover is awesome. It reaches back to the classic cool jazz covers from Blue Note and Atlantic and Verve and all the other great jazz labels that put out some of the best album covers in history, bar none.
Lots of rock bands have tried to do that, but Beck is one of the very, very few who pulled it off. The black & white tones are incredibly rich, the colors of the text are gorgeously understated, and the photo is abstract in all the right ways.
So Ash, you may have the better web site, and you may have all the cool alternate designs for the cover, and you may be cuter than I am, but ******, I'm right about this one and you're wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Opposite of right, wrong.
Yeah, and don't throw that "it's all opinion" nonsense at me. WRONG!
(Seriously, go to the Sleevage link if you haven't yet. It's a good write-up.)
Labels: Beck
posted by taotechuck at
9:36 PM
3 Comments:
Beck is an interesting artist because of his constant ability to reinvent himself, and typically it works out really well. Unfortunately I don't enjoy all of these reincarnations so I only enjoy select albums from his career. My favorite album of his was "Sea Change" a major departure from his earlier sound. "Mellow Gold" and "Odelay" are also great albums. While I may not like his entire catalog I give him a lot of credit for being original.
I think I heard a Beck album once. The most I can remember about it was some fuzzy vocals and I remember not feeling strongly towards it one way or another. I remember a lot of guys in my college dorm playing his some Beck album really loud over and over. Oh, I like the picture on the cover, but not the white trim and dull logo so much.
I enjoy a few--a FEW--Beck songs for variety, but he is no musical genius. Just quirky enough to be interesting (sometimes).
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