Beck – Midnite Vultures

There comes a time waveriders when you need to break out of your regular listening habits. Maybe that devastatingly downtuned destruction derby which typically fulfills your need for auditory aggression just isn’t satisfying you in the manner you’re used to at the moment? A change must be made! An off the beaten path diversion is in order. Something zany! Allow me to introduce you, or reintroduce you as the case may be, to Midnite Vultures from Beck.

 

This album my friends…this album is something I discovered long after release. Midnite Vultures was released in 1999. I didn’t pick up my first Beck CD until after his initial heyday in the 1990s (2005’s Guero to be specific). While I enjoyed that album quite a bit it didn’t inspire me to run out and collect the discography I missed. Fast forward to 2023 when I found a copy of Midnite Vultures in my second hand shop and decided to roll the dice. When I got home I pushed play on this album and holy s@#%, I was instantly flooded with levels of dopamine that may have been hazardous to my health!

 

To say that I love the sound of this album is an understatement which I struggle to illustrate. It’s as if the words in the statement burrowed completely through the Earth and continued with enough speed through the atmosphere to break orbit and endlessly voyage through the frictionless universe. Yeah, that about sums it up. So what does this album sound like?

 

For those uninitiated, Beck is a musical wildcard. He puts together songs by mashing up whatever genres are running through his head at the time. The resultant music contains rock, pop, hip-hop, funk, soul, country, electronica, etc. His albums (the one’s I have heard at time of writing) all sound like Beck, but they are easily distinguished from each other. Midnite Vultures leans heavily into 60’s and 70’s R&B and funk music and regularly sounds more organic than it’s most comparable predecessor Odelay. This does makes sense. Odelay was primarily the work of Beck alone while Midnite Vultures is a full band effort.

 

Don’t think I forgot that I inferred that this is one zany album. Take album opener “Sexx Laws”. This is an uptempo, danceable, horn-driven number which features a bluegrass banjo throughout it’s second half. Why? Because it fits, that’s why! “Nicotine & Gravy” brings the tempo down, but increases the funk exponentially. “Get Real Paid” breaks out an electronic soundscape, “Peaches & Cream” is a lumbering guitar-centric song with the most Prince-like vocals I hear on the album, and “Milk & Honey” has choruses straight out of a 1970s hard rock song. My point is that there are countless reference points and influences that make up this delicious sonic stew. The fact that these elements all work so well together is crazy!

 

One last thing I’d like to highlight is the absolutely ridiculous nature of the lyrics on this album. If you could not have guessed based off the song titles, I haven’t heard and been entertained by this many innuendos in a long, long time. The lyrical inspiration is blatantly obvious, and I’m here for it! Also, I laughed out loud when I first heard the lyrics in the chorus of “Debra”. I chuckle at the lyrics in the verses, but the chorus is something extra special.

 

Waveriders, Beck’s Midnite Vultures is an album that you need in your life. If you’re needing a musical jolt, if you’re currently going through a less-than-happy stretch in your life, or if you need a collection of songs that will gleefully put a smile on your face and a bump in your step look no further! Goodness knows I rely on this album to do all those things and I know I can continue to rely on it going into the future!

 

-Penfold