The Gravity Shackles Were Wild

Beck @ Governor’s Ball, Randall’s Island 6/24/2012

Black Tambourine / Gamma Ray / Soul of a Man / Hotwax / Girl / Sissyneck / Modern Guilt / Soldier Jane / Golden Age / Lost Cause / Sunday Sun / Jack-Ass / Devil’s Haircut / Loser / Novacane / Minus / Where It’s At / E-Pro

I have loved Beck for many, many years now, but this was my first Beck show. I wish I could have seen him back in his hyperactive showman period, I wish this show could’ve been twice as long, I wish he would’ve played even just one song from Midnite Vultures. But I was thrilled for every moment of this set, especially during the big crowd pleasers. (I was losing it when he did “Devil’s Haircut.”) I wrote more about this set, and the festival a whole, elsewhere.

Beck “Jack-Ass (Strange Invitation version)”

Most of Odelay falls on the funky, up-tempo end of Beck’s body of work, but the record as a whole is very well-rounded, with a few of his finest ballads sprinkled in for depth and dynamics. I’ve always favored this arrangement for “Jack-Ass” – it presages a lot of what he ended up doing on Sea Change, but it’s not quite as dour in its melancholy. The little bits of surrealism and dark humor – “loose ends tying the noose in the back of my mind” – give the song a warm, lived-in humanity, and there’s something in the way he sings “I remember the way that you smiled” that strikes me as one of the most genuinely romantic moments he’s ever set to tape.

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