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Guero

By: Jan Bunny
Date: 2nd Jun 05
Release: Album
To Cure: Hypertension

What:
Guero

Who:
Beck

On:
Geffen

Beck 'The Boy King of Slack' Hanson is back to his old tricks whatever they are. Either way his new album Guero is very Beck. Somewhere between a Spanish holiday, a synthesiser and a saloon, it shows new tastes garnished with Odelay and Midnight Vultures. Although he has set a precedent of groundbreaking and genre defying albums, it's easy to feel that there is something slightly tame about major LP number 6. It's fun, it grooves, and it shakes a little tailfeather but it is somehow lacking what we have come to expect from Beck.

Yet, to his credit, Beck is proving impossible to define, Guero is one half cut-and-paste disco, one eighth melancholic yearning and 6/15ths dirty gun-slinging swagger. It doesn't quite add up, but then again, Beck never does.