Mellow Gold is the second of four Beck records released in 1994, and it is by far his most reactionary. You have heard the song “Loser” off Mellow Gold, and let’s be clear, that single is the only reason this album exists.
Beck independently distributed “Loser” to radio stations across LA, leading to a massive surge of popularity for the young artist. “Loser” even got him signed to a record label: DGC Records, the Geffen Records subsidiary. Due to the single’s popularity, Beck was forced to leave “Loser” off his independently released album Stereopathetic Soulmanure—a passion project Beck had worked on for the last year—because DGC wanted the song on their record. As a result, a week after Stereopathetic Soulmanure, Beck and DGC put out Mellow Gold.
Now, I want you to imagine yourself buying a Mellow Gold CD in 1994. You just heard “Loser” on your favorite, brand new radio station, KVRX, and you thought to yourself: “This Beck guy sounds pretty cool. I hope he’s got a ton of stuff like this on his new album.” Then you head to Waterloo, or whatever cute Austin record store you want me to reference, (I like End of an Ear best, but they opened in 2005,) and you pick up Mellow Gold.
You pop the tape in, and “Loser” is the first song on the album. Hell yeah, right? You jam out for four minutes, tap on your wheel, sing out a couple “Soy un pertador's," and hear the song slow to a stop. Then, it’s immediately followed by “Pay No Mind (Snoozer),” a lazy, slow song set to acoustic guitar and a tambourine, paired with ketamine vocals and an audible sneer. Beck croons out his now-expected, postmodern, nonsense lyrics (“There’s shopping malls coming out of the walls”) and then gives you some important instructions in the second verse.
“Give the finger to the rock ‘n’ roll singer / As he’s dancing upon your paycheck”
“Fuckin With My Head (Mountain Dew Rock)” comes on next, and you’re right back on that horse. Sleazy rock—a screeching little guitar, and an oddly interspersed cowbell accompany all the usual notes. Fuck, he even says pantyhose again – is that a reference to your favorite song, “Loser?” Beck screams out: “It ain’t got no soul / It ain’t got no soul / No, no, no, no / No, no, no, no” and the song slows to a stop. Nice little return to form, you think to yourself.
Then that acoustic guitar returns on the next track, “Whiskeyclone, Hotel City 1997.” Beck sounds like he’s about to fall asleep in his lyrics, but it still feels normal. Then, he starts reciting his poetry into the mic: “Staring at sports cars / Crying,” he says, with that awkward, concussive audio you can only get when your mouth is over the mic. His backing vocals even sound like they’re yawning. Oh god, is this it?
It is.
For the rest of the CD, Beck alternates between half-hearted rock with some techno riffs and his downer-fueled anti-folk, albeit, not with the perfect pattern of the first six songs on the record. Sometimes, you get some of those half-hearted rock and Beastie Boys riffs in succession, like on “Sweet Sunshine” and “Beercan” (both of which, by the way, seem intent on getting the Normals to eject the disk, with their apparently average introductions followed by psychedelic experimentations.) But those two pale in comparison to the genuinely hellish “Mutherfucker” with amped guitar, a crashing drum kit, and, of course, the chorus, “Everyone’s out to get you motherfucker / Everyone’s out to get you motherfucker,” which Beck screeches out, before eventually succumbing to a fit of screams at the end of the track.
I dream about the stoner who heard that song for the first time and started tweaking out of his mind. I feel you, soldier. I did too.
Beck closes Mellow Gold with “Blackhole.” It’s a genuinely lovely song, with a warm tone, a soothing delivery in Beck’s vocals, and some dream-like sitar and violins layered atop the already gentle guitar. But, seemingly discontent with this, Beck’s “Analog Odyssey” takes the final spot in the tracklist, a hissing experiment in audio, with discordant beeps and boops and dragging, fuzzy synthesizers.
Mellow Gold, despite its perfect single at the top, is not a perfect album. It’s a spiteful album, constructed to tell the Normals to fuck off and encourage everyone else to get into some of his other stuff, preferably, his independent stuff. “Blackhole,” that song I found so beautiful thirty-odd years later, reminds me a lot of “Modesto” from Stereopathetic Soulmanure. A similarly positioned closer, followed by the experimental “Salmonella Shizergeist (Utopia),” which, while as off-putting as “Analog Odyssey,” feels different. Fundamentally, inextricably more loved than Mellow Gold.