Beck
Midnite Vultures, Geffen Records

The funky sorcerer has cooked up a fresh brew. Beck's new album Midnite Vultures, released last week, is a dance-inducing, bomb droppin', funk-groovin', post modern musical concoction that creates a genre all its own.

The oft-labeled genius that is Beck Hanson broke out commercially in 1994 with the LP Mellow Gold and the single "Loser." Labeled by some as a one-hit wonder, Beck proved his critics wrong by creating the groundbreaking Odelay in 1996, by scoring big with the three consecutive hits "Where It's At," "Devils Haircut" and "The New Pollution." Not to mention, Album of the Year honors by Rolling Stone magazine.

While touring to support Odelay, Beck wrote two albums worth of material. The first was released in late 1998.

This album, Mutations, is a folkish Latin mix mainly driven by acoustic guitar and harmonica. However, Beck saw Mutations as an experimental venture and made it known to the press that the true follow up to Odelay was yet to come. Enter Midnite Vultures.

It starts fast and furious with the first single "Sexx Laws," a horn/banjo-infested body-rockin' jam (seriously, a horn and banjos hybrid can rock) destined to be spun at parties for years to come. Without stopping to catch a breath, Beck moves into "Nicotine & Gravy" a mix of unpretentious white-boy hip hop with surreal lyrics that provide a subconscious ambiguity Salvador Dalí would have been proud of.

Perhaps the only glitch on the album is the way too standard sounding "Pressure Zone." But Beck quickly redeems himself on the next and last track "Debra," a soulful satire where Beck howls the words, "I want to get with you, only you, and your sister, I think her name's Debra."

— Reviewed by Tony Layser