In indie circles, Beck Hansen is kind of a god. The guy’s been around since 1994, and was hoisted into indie superstar status in 1996 after the release of the now-ubiquitous, if not cliché, Odelay. Since then, Beck’s career has had its ups and downs, but despite the weight his name still carries (and that it does, a tap on the shoulder from Beck in 2003 was the equivalent of a tap on the shoulder from Kanye nowadays), the once-folk heavy-hitter seems to be lost. On Colors, Beck drops any pretension of still making folk, and, if it wasn’t for the fact that his name is still attached to the project, I would be hard-pressed to find any connection between it and the multi-instrumentalist’s origins. Hansen’s lyrical irreverence has long been a talking point, but on Colors, that irreverence, fueled by what I can only imagine have been decades of self-indulgence, turns to disinterest and cliché.
Despite the fact that I wouldn’t call myself a lifelong Beck fan, even I can tell that Colors is far from Beck’s best.
