Sound Check — Geoff Carter: ‘Vultures’ a heck of a Beck effort

Friday, Dec. 10, 1999 | 9:49 a.m.

Geoff Carter's music column appears Fridays. Reach him at carter@ vegas.com

Say what you will about Beck Hansen, but never say he's delivered the same album twice. "Midnite Vultures," his follow-up to last year's "Mutations," is to the previous release as day is to night, or as "Odelay" is to "One Foot in The Grave." You know you've arrived when your albums can be used as metaphors.

Granted, the metaphors of "Midnite Vultures" are big enough to drive a continent through. The day-glo cover art evokes New York's 1970s club underground, in all its punky, funky glory; just replace the vinyl-panted figures on the cover with Deborah Harry and Fab Five Freddy and you'll get not just a sense of Beck's latest visual aesthetic, but a taste of what he's doing sonically as well.

And wouldn't you know? It's fabulous. Only Beck has the guts to make a record that abridges Studio 54 and CBGB into an 11-song riot, and only Beck has the talent necessary to pull the damn thing off. Others, like Daft Punk and Air, have tried to mine the same gold, but where the cold, perfect repetition of "Around the World" and "Kelly Watch The Stars" would have ground the dance floors of 1978 to a puzzled halt, the danceable tracks of "Midnite Vultures" -- nearly all of them -- are as organic as the tracks Beck knowingly borrows from.

And baby, it's one hell of a night in the city. The robot-boogie of "Get Real Paid" is as instantly addictive as sugar, and twice as sticky. Arthur Baker-style synthesizers roll out a rhythm suitable for breaking and popping (remember?), a sexy (yet somehow sexless) vocal intones "We like the boys with the bulletproof vests / we like the girls with the cellophane chests," and a helicopter flies over a stadium full of applauding fans -- all before the chorus.

There are other influences at play on "Midnite Vultures" -- The Jonzun Crew, Barry White, naturally the P-Funk crew -- but there's a strong chance that most won't hear them. Rather, they'll accuse Beck of making a Prince ripoff record. I played "Get Real Paid" for my sister -- an avid Artist fan from way back -- and within a minute, she said, "I can almost see the guy in the surgical scrubs." But she said it with admiration, not disdain.

One can't be blamed for hearing The Artist, particularly in the falsetto vocal of "Debra" (a longtime highlight of his live show; it's a great pleasure to finally have a concrete copy of it), but you have to realize: Beck could have made the same record even if Prince had never existed. He draws on the same influences, the same vibe. I prefer to think of Beck as a contemporary of The Artist's -- just a few years out of time.

It's an interesting theory -- is Beck truly a man out of time? If so, to what time does he belong? He's proven an accomplished songwriter, enough so to have his songs respectfully covered by such unfunky notables as Tom Petty and Johnny Cash. He's laid down some of the fattest grooves the decade had to offer; you won't forget "Where It's At," "Loser" and "Beercan" any time soon.

Whatever the case, it's a fortunate thing that Beck has found an audience in the here and now. Audiences came close to writing Beck off after the mammoth success of "Loser"; we found it easier to believe in a one-hit wonder than the arrival of a solid talent, an honest-to-God genius. Prince went through the same wringer, as I recall.

Rather apt. Without diminishing the work of either artist, I'd like to say I think of "Midnite Vultures" as Beck's "1999," but only because of its timeless charm. You could bury it in the desert sands for a millennium; the hipsters of 2999 will have as much fun with it as we did. And maybe, just maybe, they'll take to the pink vinyl pants, too.

And the funk don't stop, as the party people say. "So...How's Your Girl?", the debut CD from Handsome Boy Modeling School, is practically a New Funk tutorial. The professors, Dan "The Automator" Nakamura and Prince Paul, have taught more than a few tricks to Dr. Octagon and De La Soul respectively; on "How's Your Girl?", the superstar producers lead everyone from Sean Lennon to Alec Empire to you on a guided tour of the campus, and you can only wonder why you sank all that money into UNLV.

The groove of "How's Your Girl?" is about what you'd expect from these two personality-rich talents: an absurdly fat bottom end, deft scratching and a bunch of disembodied samples, floating in and out of the mix like heavy clouds. "Rock 'n' Roll (Could Never Hip Hop Like This)" may or not be a gentle mocking of Kid Rock, Korn and the like; whatever the case, it's a thick chunk of DJ funk, and starts the set off right.

The big-beat chamber music sound of "Look at this Face" is a real hoot. "The Runway Song" is the best scratch opera I've ever heard. And "Sunshine" takes the entire college rock gauntlet -- Spain's Josh Hayden, Money Mark and Tarnation's Paula Frazier are featured, as is Father Guido Sarducci -- and squeezes it into a sweet R&B track, just the thing for seducing that shaved-head alternative object of your desire. We hope you found the 16-step course worthwhile; please send $16 to the H.B.M.S. as soon as possible, so that you may be prepared for the next course -- coming, hopefully, more sooner than later.