mellow gold award (Mellow Gold - Beck)

Member Name: ronaldfarmer

Product:	Mellow Gold - Beck
Date:	19/11/05 (89 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: at its best, outstanding

Disadvantages: could be better quality as a whole album

This is the first Beck album I ever bought, and after seeing what he released in to the charts subesquent to this album, it was the last. He seemed to change his style radically after this to one which was my less to my taste. The style on this album is very hard to describe, there is nothing like it out there.

1. Loser
2. Pay No Mind (Snoozer)
3. Fuckin' With My Head (Mountain Dew Rock)
4. Whiskeyclone, Hotel City 1997
5. Soul Suckin' Jerk
6. Truckdrivin' Neighbors Downstairs (Yellow Sweat)
7. Sweet Sunshine
8. Beercan
9. Steal My Body Home
10. Nitemare Hippy Girl
11. Mutherfuker
12. Blackhole
13. Analog Odyssey

The first song is Loser, you have probably heard it, it was a big hit about 10 years ago. "im a loser baby so why dont you kill me' the scrapey guitars and thumping bass make an amazing sound, the slack-jaw vocals go perfectly, one imagines a scruffy, baggy trousered kid, leaning back after a 24 hour session on the Playstation, thinking out loud.
Pay no mind is an excellent song, with strange surreal lyrics, talkign about huge dildoes that will crush the sun, this song is more melodic, alightly easier to listen to, yet not as original as Loser.
Soul suckin Jerk is perhaps my favorite song on the album. It builds up so well, thumping bass lines, even more so than on loser, it refers to his boss at some crappy job, he talks about being "left down- couldnt find a ride home, sun went down i got frozen to the bone". again these amusing images of a down and out, living the squalid, existentially meaningless repetitious life.
Truck-drivin neighbours is another fantastic song, if you ever wandered what it would be like to be a hill-billy, hick, american, living in a trailer part in the wastes of southern Illinois, you can not fail to at least have a better idea. "shit kickin, speed takin, truck drivin neighbours downstairs".

I have mentioned here, what i think are my personal highlights of the album, the other songs in my opinion are lacking the quality of the three i have mentioned which is the problem with this album. At its best, it is one of the greatest albums of the 1990s, but it simply is unable to maintain this standard, otherwise it would have been an masterpiece.

This album is excellent though,if you want to chill out and relax it is perfect, it sounds so wonderfully lazy, you cant help but kick your shoes off, get a beer out the fridge, forget to feed the cat, just forget everything, wollow in self indulgent lazy stupefaction.

Summary: excellent, but shame high standard wasnt maintained throughout