Beck’s latest pivot, Colors, is almost sure to be one of the idiosyncratic artist’s most divisive offerings ever. It’s ironic that this is because Colors is his most straightforward and innocuous release ever. Sure, Beck is not really that inaccessible and has penned many radio friendly tunes like “Where It’s At”, “New Pollution”, “Blue Moon”, and (of course) “Loser”. But Colors feels like a catch-all for everything hip in the last 15 years of pop music. Beck moves from shimmery, The 1985-esque hooks on “Seventh Heaven” to a tongue-in-cheek flow on “I’m So Free” with only a bright, danceable palette to connect the disparate musical ideas. That’s not to say that this record is worth skipping, but Colors is part of a strange 2017 trend of purposefully disposable records made by artists renowned for their album-craft.
Colors jumps all over the pop-spectrum, but maintains a constant barrage of simple melodies and unapologetically direct arrangement. But there’s a certain cohesion in Colors musical ADHD that feels distinctly Beck. This is undoubtedly still the same artist that’s produced masterpieces like Sea Change, Morning Phase, and Mellow Gold. While Colors flicks across the billboard map, it’s perhaps all the more reflective of the 21st century music schizophrenia for that.
The meta-commentary of the record seems focused on addressing the impulsiveness of contemporary pop. Thankfully, however, this subtext never supplants the musical vision of the record. While painfully simple at times, there is no denying the catchiness and power of tracks like “Now I’m Free”, “Dear Life” and “Wow” . Beck’s arrangements and production perfectly feature the record’s earworm melodies where a lesser artist might simply beat you over the head with the hook. When Beck repeatedly sings: “In your seventh heaven”, he varies textures and delivery slightly through each chorus rather than relying on copy pasted takes. It’s subtle, but pushes Colors above mere pop-parody.
Like Queens of the Stone Age and Arcade Fire before him, Beck has produced an album that is disarmingly cheery and superfluous in the face of the current political and social climate? It begs the question: is this meta-commentary impactful enough to warrant a lack of directness during this pivotal time? Unlike with Queens and Arcade Fire, I would argue that Colors does successfully find meaning in banality. It effectively mirrors the ignorance of the Trump era better than most records this year and, unlike Queens and Arcade Fire, Beck doesn’t have a track record of direct social/political commentary. Thus, this approach on Colors feels more natural for him. However, on a larger scale, it is hard to find Colors a more compelling treatise on the state of the world than Damn. or the likes. So it’s a good thing it’s so damn catchy, because Colors, along with its 2017 brood, is unlikely to linger long in the rock canon.
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