Beck Tickets

It’s hard to think of a more creatively unpredictable musician than Beck.

Case in point: just as he seemed to have nailed the transience and restlessness of the ’90s with sample-heavy, self-aware singles such as Devils Haircut and Loser, he abruptly changed tack and delivered the beautifully trippy Mutations. If anything, the only thing that is predictable is his unpredictability.

Beck arrived almost fully formed on 1994’s Mellow Gold. The first two songs alone showcased a restless yet clearly defined mind, flitting from the stoned hip hop of breakout single Loser to the cassette-deck Dylanisms of Pay No Mind (Snoozer). Almost simultaneously, Beck recorded the lo-fi folk record One Foot In The Grave (released shortly after Mellow Gold) and released the eccentric collection Stereopathic Soul Manure.

Beck’s stylistic soup took a leap forward with 1996’s Odelay, a record that cleaned up the production (courtesy of the Dust Brothers) and demonstrated his impressive ability to leap from garage rock to hip hop to funky electronica while always sounding exactly like himself. Devils Haircut, The New Pollution and Where It’s At proved significant hits, cementing Odelay’s position as one of the decade’s defining cultural artefacts.

Mutations, the first of many albums with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, followed in 1998, dropping most of Odelay’s deadpan samples and slackerisms and replacing them with warmly psychedelic indie folk. Again Beck shifted gears and returned a year later with the robotic funk of Midnite Vultures.

Beck’s first album of the new millennium was Sea Change in 2002, a critically acclaimed return to sadly psychedelic folk inspired by a particularly tough break-up. He then reunited with the Dust Brothers for his closest approximation of his “signature” sound on Guero, which yielded the hit single E-Pro. The Information in 2006 saw him back with Godrich.

Following Modern Guilt, his 2008 collaboration with Danger Mouse, Beck spent a few years being uncharacteristically quiet, partly down to a spinal injury sustained while shooting the video for E-Pro. He eventually resurfaced as a producer for Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stephen Malkmus and Thurston Moore, then via his Record Club, where he recorded covers of seminal albums with a group of friends.

He finally returned to his own material with Morning Phase, a companion piece to Sea Change that won Beck three Grammys. He won two more for 2017’s Colors. In 2019, he teamed up with Pharrell Williams for Hyperspace, a record that began life as a Beck and N.E.R.D collaboration, before morphing into his 12th studio album.