Guero in Bloomington, MN

Ever since his thrilling 1994 debut with
Mellow Gold
, each new
Beck
album was a genuine pop cultural event, since it was never clear which direction he would follow. Kicking off his career as equal parts noise-prankster, indie folkster, alt-rocker, and ironic rapper, he's gone to extremes, veering between garishly ironic party music to brooding heartbroken
Baroque pop
, and this unpredictability is a large part of his charm, since each album was distinct from the one before. That remains true with
Guero
, his eighth album (sixth if you don't count 1994's
Stereopathetic Soul Manure
and
One Foot in the Grave
, which some don't), but the surprising thing here is that it sounds for all the world like a good, straight-ahead, garden-variety
album, which is something he'd never delivered prior to this 2005 release. In many ways,
is deliberately designed as a classicist
album, a return to the sound and aesthetic of his 1996 masterwork,
Odelay
. After all, he's reteamed with the producing team of
the Dust Brothers
, who are widely credited for the dense, sample-collage sound of
, and the light, bright
stands in stark contrast to the lush melancholy of 2002's
Sea Change
while simultaneously bearing a knowing kinship to the sound that brought him his greatest critical and commercial success in the mid-'90s. This has all the trappings of being a cold, calculating maneuver, but the album never plays as crass. Instead, it sounds as if
, now a husband and father in his mid-thirties, is revisiting his older aesthetic and sensibility from a new perspective. The sound has remained essentially the same -- it's still a kaleidoscopic jumble of
pop
,
hip-hop
, and
indie rock
, with some Brazilian and
electro
touches thrown in -- but
is a hell of a lot calmer, never indulging in the lyrical or musical flights of fancy or the absurdism that made
such giddy listens. He now operates with the skill and precision of a craftsman, never dumping too many ideas into one song, paring his words down to their essentials, mixing the record for a wider audience than just his friends. Consequently,
never is as surprising or enthralling as
, but
is also not trying to be as wild and funny as he was a decade ago. He's shifted away from exaggerated wackiness -- which is good, since it wouldn't wear as well on a 34 year old as it would on a man a decade younger -- and concentrated on the record-making, winding up with a thoroughly enjoyable LP that sounds warm and familiar upon the first play and gets stronger with each spin. No, it's not a knockout, the way his first few records were, but it's a successful mature variation on
, one that proves that
's sensibility will continue to reap rewards for him as he enters his second decade of recording. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine