Ephemeral Facts Are Confusing Me

Beck “I’m So Free”

The surface of Beck’s Colors is glossy and upbeat, as though Beck and his collaborator Greg Kurstin went out of their way to make a record that would sound mainstream and contemporary. They seem most directly inspired by Phoenix – and frankly, a lot of it is better Phoenix music than their own recent album – but the overall aesthetics fit in with commercial quasi-indie acts like Foster the People, Portugal the Man, and Fitz and the Tantrums. There’s also a touch of the tropical vibes that have been all over pop for a while now, and a general chill, stoned Los Angeles feeling to it.

It sounds kinda like Beck trying to make a record for “normal” people, but not quite hitting the mark because he’s an oddball to the core. It’s like the bit in Clifford when Martin Short is asked to make a face like a normal boy and Short makes a series of faces that leap directly into the uncanny valley of human facial expressions. Beck is possibly the greatest and most versatile mimic in the history of pop music, but he can’t will himself to be ordinary. But it’s very interesting for him to try, and I respect that an artist as accomplished and canonized as him would seem this sincerely engaged with contemporary mainstream sounds. In this way, the record is his equivalent to David Bowie’s Let’s Dance – an elder statesman engaging with popular music relatively late in his career, if just for kicks.

The lyrics of Colors tell a different story. Beck’s words are lucid and straightforward, almost entirely setting aside the surrealism of his best known work in favor of more direct and philosophical approach. The lyrics seem to pull back and forth between a dissatisfied yearning and a sort of zen contentedness. It reminds me of George Harrison – cycles of anxiety and vague, formless dread followed by moments of spirituality and perspective.

The song that really jumped out at me both musically and lyrically is “I’m So Free,” which is more rocking than anything else on the record, and has a sentiment that seems to be rooted in his background in Scientology. He’s singing about some feeling of enlightenment, and being “so free” of what seems like what Scientologists would call “suppressive persons.” It’s a bit rattling to hear Beck sing “I’m gonna freeze out these enemies” – he’s never really seemed like a guy with an enemies list, you know? But there’s other lines that suggest he’s casting out negative parts of himself, so perhaps I’m reading a bit too much into this.

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