Beck: Islington Academy, London 14 March 2005

Repackaged eighties dancefloor hits thump from the speakers. The warm-up DJ responsible wears a T-shirt which reads, “Bring back life” – which is the perfect essay on our anticipation. The audience has long since stopped condensing – everyone got here early, even though there is not a whiff of a support band. No one wants to miss a thing – and who can blame us? Islington Academy tonight promises the boldest affirmation to date of its ability to host important events. This is the UK live debut of Beck’s first album since 2002’s ‘Sea Change’ and we are all sniffer dogs for clues.

The crowd itself is perhaps its own biggest intimation. I bite my tongue on the word ‘eclectic’; its like there’s been a free-for-all run on a Notting Hill charity shop and this is the resultant clothes-that-clash party – a mind boggling array of savvy but elusive styles. On stage we are greeted by overlaid transparent screens that juxtapose matrix-ethereal 3D line effects with blurred freeze frame pictures, space invaders and postmodern architecture in negative. There are enough instrument stations to baffle the Beta Band and it is impossible not to study the man whose job it is to meticulously check each of the eight or so guitars by turn.

After the lengthy wait, Beck and friends are suddenly upon us all at once. The steady bass and drums of ‘Black Tambourine’ herald that it’s all aboard a Dust Brothers return journey, now treating seasoned commuters to a vision in white (complete with white-rimmed shades), dancing and shaking a tambourine. Is this the iconographic ‘Guero’, we must ask ourselves: is this an actor’s reconstruction of the Beck of old, here to put us at ease? The real Beck meanwhile, the Beck of now, wears by contrast a more somber jacket and what could pass for a train driver’s cap. These days he has the more sombre obligation to provide fantastic guitar parts.

Tickets punched, ‘Devil’s Haircut’ kicks in. As always an excuse to rock-out, tonight more than ever the ‘Odelay’ classic serves the dual role of reassurance, establishing the territory for what will largely be a night of new material.

The next of which is the incredibly good ‘Scarecrow’, which has the appeal, on first listening, of a deep, driven, plodding yet funky blues bass line. The jacket and cap are off; Beck’s guitar chops and changes a great variation of pace through solos and backbone playing. Over this comes the most haunting harmonica you’ll ever hear, with all the double edge of a nostalgic ghost train. Then a seamless transition into ‘We Dance Alone’, with Beck alternating between record scratching and rap.
After much heartfelt applause for these two tracks, Beck announces the next, ‘Que Onda Guero’, with wry lethargy: “This song’s called Guero. There’s plenty of you in tonight.” Beyond the Spanish-styled hip hop, the record scratching and (if my hearing serves me correctly) the odd cow bell, the repeated line, “Guero where you going?” seems, even at this stage in Beck’s career/life, like philosophical self-enquiry.

‘Girl’ is the album’s requisite instant-hit single, but more Beach Boys than Sexx Laws – and with more cowbells! (Trust me, hearing is believing)
‘Knock Ya Out’ goes back to rap with an eighties feel. Beck and three other band members are centre stage, swaying in unison. Out have come hand-held Yamaha keyboard, agogo and some weird-looking electronic gadget. Towards the end Beck reverts to a display of masterful record scratching.

‘Missing’ has a hypnotic Arabic feel, like reminiscence on the closing bars of ‘Nicotine & Gravy’. Our man in white has swapped agogo for kazoo and Beck has got hold of a shakere (a hollow gourd covered in a net of beads, which looks from a distance like a big knobbly pot).
After the heavy chugging blues of another new song (‘Go It Alone’), there is evident dissent from some sectors of the audience – though the silent majority is spellbound. Beck seems too tired and fractious to keep up his end of the banter: “I’m feeling a little jet-lagged… and loving it,” he musters. One guy, however, persists in his demands for the band to ‘play something old and cool’. Beck’s response becomes stony and emphatic: “Shut up.” That gets a cheer. “Shut the fuck up.” Another cheer but Beck looks deadly serious now.

Better to let the music do the talking – and words fail me to describe the beauty of what comes next. ‘Broken Drum’ I can only describe as ‘Runner Dials Zero’ but with take-off. This song seems to cheer Beck up, who afterwards is all smiles for the first time tonight.
“Here you go now. Something cool,” he emphasises, “You’ve gotta work a little bit!” The unmistakable opening bars of ‘Where It’s At’ send everyone wild. Beck informs us that this time he wants us to jump around and has adjusted the song accordingly. Perhaps it’s for his own inspiration, because he soon feels up to giving us a demonstration of improvised keyboard skills.

From here we are cruising. ‘Hell Yes’ is somewhere in the zone of ‘Get Real Paid’, complete to the display of robot dancing and wily lyrics – Beck telling us that he is, “Baking a cake, fixing your TV, calling your Grandma.” From its Billie Jean opening beats, ‘Rental Car’ is by parts fluttery then heavy, like a fairground psychosis. ‘Emergency Exit’ goes right back to the building blocks of ‘Mellow Gold’ (thinking, perhaps, ‘Black Hole’ with a beat). ‘E-Pro’ is simultaneously a dizzying fracas and a self-conscious appeal: “See me coming to town with my soul/ straight down out of the world with my fingers/ holding onto the devil I know.”
With Mr Guero shadow-boxing madrigals, ‘Get Real Paid’ closes the set appropriately enough – but by default. If it weren’t for Beck’s state of exhaustion, I am convinced we would be leaving with a greater reward – a rare rendition of ‘Loser’, which by all accounts was sound-checked before the show. Speculation, sure, but it is borne out by the band’s evident pause and discussion off stage, and by the fact that for several minutes no-one in the venue (sound desk included) seem to know what’s going on. The lights don’t come on, but neither is there reappearance.

It’s hard to get a gauge on everything I’ve just heard. Naturally it’s been another exhibition of astounding music. However, the new material doesn’t have quite the heart-breaking intensity of ‘Sea Change’ and it doesn’t oscillate between extremes in the way (the beautiful way) of ‘Mutations’; thinking now by contrast, of Beck alone on stage at Brixton Academy doing ‘Nobody’s Fault But My Own’ on a squeezebox, so faltering and fragile that you come over all paternal: do the only thing you can, which is to will your boy on to blow them all away – only to see him five minutes later achieving exactly that with the blistering confidence of ‘Lazy Flies’. In that moment I realised it was really the other way round - that Beck has sustained me through the last decade of my life, bringing out a new album to coincide exactly with every important phase, always eerily appropriate to the direction.

‘Guero’ is for me a statement of continuity, that Beck is still true to all that he has given the world – that nothing he produces is a detour or passing foible. It’s arguably his most accessible album to date, having shirked the sense of parody that stoked ‘Midnight Vultures’ (but also alienated some listeners). What it means for life as we know it is yet to be seen – but the ride ahead seems pretty smooth.

words: Dan Alderson

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